2018 Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology

RALPH MUNN
CREATIVE
WRITING
ANTHOLOGY
2018

Ralph Munn
Creative Writing
Anthology
2018

Ralph Munn
Creative Writing
Anthology
2018
Committee Chair
Sienna Cittadino, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh–Allegheny
Committee Co-Chair
Michael Balkenhol, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh–Squirrel Hill
Editorial Committee
Emily Fear, Sewickley Public Library
James Graham, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh–Hazelwood
Katelyn Cove, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh–Beechview
Marian Streiff, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh–Mt. Washington
Matt Zeoli, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh–Brookline
Book Design and Copyediting
Connie Amoroso
Cover Illustration
Lexi Hall

Copyright © 2018 by Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
All rights revert to the individual authors.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
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Contents
About the Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest 8
The Judges 9
Short Prose
(First Place)
Brianna Kline-Costa Bruised Girls Are Like Rabbits 13
(Second Place)
Ciara Sing
A Pop Quiz to Make Myself Even
More Confused About Identity 17
Aliza Hamid A Series of Unfortunate Subway Events 20
Amanda Lu You are me. I am you. 26
Brianna Longo The Outcasts 34
Cari Molin Pikachu Buddy 44
Chelsianna Havko A Good Day to Die 46
Destiny Perkins Lineage 51
Evie Jin The Keeper 53
Evie Jin After the Show 60
Jacqueline LeKachman The Voicemail 68
Julian Riccobon Baby Steps 75
Julian Riccobon Tigers and Elephants 85
Lemlem Gamble Self 96
Madeline Bain Healing 98
Madison Jones The Brave Boy 102
Nisha Rao Growing Up Feminist 104
Noor El-Dehaibi Matt 107
Qingqing Zhao Breakfast with Strangers 110
Serena Zets Frida 118
Tess Buchanan Mother Earth: A Bird’s End 120
Will Thayer
The End of the World Circus
Is Going Great! 122

Poetry
(First Place)
Marissa Randall Future’s Spark 127
(Second Place)
Ilan Magnani The Extinction of a Body 129
Aaliyah Thomas Coffin Birth 130
Alex Flagg A Familial Disconnect 132
Amanda Wolf Three’s Company 133
Amanda Wolf Skaters 135
Brianna Caridi the Blood moon is no less Beautiful 137
Chelsianna Havko Failure 138
Chloe Butcher Alien 139
Chloe Butcher Winter 140
Chloe Walls Where I’m From 141
Ciara Sing
For the Black Boys That Never
Learned How to Swim 142
Emily Rhodes Carrion 143
Erin Park The Worker’s Word 144
Hazel Rouse Sirens 146
Hunter Greenberg Legs 148
Jack Scott The Winter Sport: A Ski Racing Sonnet 150
Jordan Crivella operation protect the people 151
Kieren Konig Water 153
Lauryn David Parental Guidance 155
Lexi Hall Like a Used Car 157
Lianna Rishel Case, Severity B 158
Lily Tolchin Meteor Shower 159
Maddie Figas
Amelia Bedelia and I Walk Through
the Aisles of Tsunami Surf Shop 160
Maddie Figas
Corey I’m Writing Because Nothing
Good Has Happened Since You Died 162
MaKayla Wilson Homewood 164

Maria Kresen Rape of Youth 166
Maya Shook The Little Guys 167
Olivia Balogh Enough 169
Serena Zets An ode to ollanta 171
Tara Stenger Prized Fish 173
Thalia King Malala and I Tour America 175
Acknowledgments 177

About the Ralph Munn
Creative Writing Contest
Born in 1894, Ralph Munn started his library career as a reference librarian in
Seattle in 1921, became Flint Public Library’s Librarian in 1926 and then on
to the Directorship of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in 1928 until 1964.
During that time, he held the positions of Director and Dean of the library
school at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University,
until it became part of the University of Pittsburgh in 1962. An endowment
fund created to honor his legacy now provides support for creative writing
opportunities for young adults through the Library.
Thanks to research by Sheila Jackson and the Development Office, we know
that the original use of this endowment, contributed by friends of Ralph Munn,
began in the 1960s for a lecture series on librarianship and transitioned to use
for creative writing workshops in the 1970s, under supervision of the Carnegie
Institute, which oversaw the fund. After a hiatus in the 1990s the contest was
revived in 2007 with additional help from other bequests. Library staff and
volunteers led workshops and formed an editorial board to judge entries to the
contest and find professional writers to choose contest winners. In the first year,
the contest took off, receiving nearly 300 entries, and it has not stopped being
a popular and anticipated part of Teen Services.
Since the creative writing contest joined forces with the Labsy awards under
the Teen Media Awards banner, it continues to evolve as a way for Allegheny
county teens to be acknowledged, published, and awarded for their work and
creativity. The libraries in the county are proud to support this creative work
and provide spaces, mentors, and resources toward that end.
Tessa Barber
Chair, Ralph Munn Creative Writing Committee (2015 – 2016)
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The Judges
Poetry
Sharon Flake
Sharon G. Flake has an international reputation as a top children’s and YA
author. Her breakout novel The Skin I’m In, established her as a must read
author among middle and high students, parents and educators. She has spoken
to more than two-hundred thousand young people, and hugged nearly as many.
Flake has penned nine novels, numerous short stories, plays, and a picture
book entitled, You Are Not a Cat. Her work has been translated into multiple
languages including French, Korean and Portuguese. She has been awarded
several Coretta Scott King Honor awards along with the YWCA Racial Justice
Award, and her work has appeared on many prestigious lists including the
Kirkus Review’s Top Ten Books of the Year; Best Books for Young Adult Readers
by the American Library Association; Top Ten Books for the Teen Age by
the New York Public Library; Top Twenty Recommended Books to Read by
the Texas Library Association, the Junior Library Guide Selection; 100 Books
Every Teenage Girl Should Read; Booklist’s Editor’s Choice Award, and others.
Prose
Abeer Hoque
Abeer Y. Hoque is a Nigerian born Bangladeshi American writer and photographer.
Her books include a travel photography monograph, The Long Way
Home (2013), a linked story collection, The Lovers and the Leavers (2015), and
a memoir, Olive Witch (2017). She has won fellowships from Fulbright, NEA,
and NYFA, and her work has been published in Guernica, The Rumpus, Elle,
Catapult, ZYZZYVA, and the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, among
others. She has B.S. and M.A. degrees from the Wharton School, an M.F.A.
from the University of San Francisco, and she has held two solo photography
exhibitions. See more at olivewitch.com.
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Short Prose
First Place
“Bruised Girls Are Like Rabbits”
by Brianna Kline-Costa
Second Place
“A Pop Quiz to Make Myself Even
More Confused About Identity”
by Ciara Sing

Brianna Kline-Costa
Grade 11
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Short Prose
Bruised Girls Are Like Rabbits
(Non-Fiction)
“Mexican, huh?” He leans against the wall to stabilize himself. He reeks of
liquor. “Well, hola.” He laughs, his body swaying and feet stumbling across
the title floor.
I am pressed into the corner of the kitchen, my fingers tracing the edge
of counter. The door to the back porch swings open, gusts of winds sending
it careening into the wooden railing with a heavy thud. As night fell, the
temperature of the kitchen dropped to a disconcerting chill, and I use my hands
to mask my goosebumps, and the way my veins burn through my skin under
florescent lights. He stands leaning against the kitchen wall across from me. I
stare at the rusted stove burners, blushed with heat.
“Dad, stop.” My friend turns towards me, rolling her eyes and smiling. Her
face is apologetic. Like we are sharing a joke. I smile back at her, but I know
my face is tight and pale, and my smile is forced and unconvincing. She doesn’t
notice though. She looks through me.
“No, no, see, here’s the thing. . . .” His body falls into the chair behind
him. “I don’t mind them in the country, as long as they know their role. That’s
the important part.”
He leans towards us, and I can feel his hot breath on my face. My cheeks
flush in anger and embarrassment. I feel my back pressed until the wall. My
eyelashes tremble, and I worry that he can see the gentle tremors of my body,
like a rabbit pressed against the age of its cage, the rapid beating of its heart
echoing in the silence like a snare drum. He drunkenly turns his bottle upside
down, and laughs as beer sloshed against my feet, seeping into my socks and
yellowing the white. The stale smell of cheap beer. His teeth yellowed and his
face contorted uglily.
“Why don’t you get on your knees and clean my floor, sweetheart?”
I was thirteen. It was the age when I stopped wanting to be looked at, when
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
I started straightening my hair every day, so familiar with the sizzle of anti-frizz
products as I clamped down, the air thick with the smell of burnt hair; when
I started wearing cheap drugstore mascara that smudged and left dark bruises
under my eyes, and black specks across my lids. Started becoming conscious
of how I smile (never with my teeth, until the braces were off), what angle I
stood (pivoted slightly to the right to counter the appearance of hip dips), how
I laughed (head back, hand over my mouth to cover my lips).
That night, we set up blankets on her couch and watch horror movies.
Her house smells of cigarette smoke, and is littered with crushed beer bottles,
and the smell of weed reeks from her older brother’s room, but that was most
of our homes. Things didn’t bother us as much; men would yell things out of
the window of their car to us when we walked to the convenience store, and
we would flip them off or yell things back and run away giggling when they
turned the car back around. When men followed us from our bus stops, we
would complain to our friends about it, rolling our eyes like the attention of
boys and men was the most inconvenient thing in our lives, searching out of
our peripheral for any tinge of jealousy in their eyes, but deeper than that, it
scared us and it left us uncomfortable in our bodies. We knew that walking
down certain streets, our bodies didn’t belong to us anymore, and we were told
that we liked this, even by each other.
I hear him when he stumbles through the door. The keys jangling in the
lock, the door knob twisting, turned by clumsy fingers. From the living room,
we can hear him wiping off his shoes on the mat and opening the fridge for
another beer. His vision getting a little more blurred and dizzy. His voice getting
a little more slurred. Drinking by himself one room over, legs propped up on
the table.
I don’t say a single word throughout the whole encounter. After he speaks,
he waits a moment to see if I’ll say anything in my defense. His face is a foot
from mine, and I see how it flushes when he bends over, sweat dripping down
his temples and plastering greyed curls to the sides of his head. I imagine how
I look in the moment: eyes round and wide, face empty and bovine, my arms
thin and freckled, legs veined and pale, incredibly breakable. Like translucent
stained glass.
He laughs at my empty and frightened silence, then saunters out of the
kitchen. We hear the front door slam, and the engine of the truck rev, and pull
away. It is eleven thirty. I lean against the table and try to cover my shaking.
14

“Sorry about that.” She turns back towards me, her hair falling over her
face, the same mousy brown as her father’s without the gray streaks, her eyes
the same deep amber. “Wanna watch another movie?”
Short Prose
He knew that it would make me uncomfortable, and he knew that I would have
nothing to say, and in that he got to exert an incredible power over me. A power
more freeing and overwhelming that all the gin and vodka in his cupboards.
One that I learned men couldn’t resist.
I can’t think about what it means to be Hispanic without thinking about
what it means to a girl. The two are too connected in my mind. That night
had as much to do with sex as with race, and more than anything, with power.
It’s a beautiful thing to be a woman, and that’s something I learned later, when
I grew and saw all the millions of ways women could be beautiful. But’s it’s a
terrible thing to be a woman, too, and that’s the first lesson I learned, and the
one I can never seem to outrun.
The power is in how we see ourselves. Growing up, I saw Latino women as
maids, housekeepers, and if they weren’t the help, they were overtly sexualized.
Thick lipped, wide hipped, cinnamon skin, long dark hair, with snippy remarks
and little moral compass. These were the images on television. In my life, I
had even less inspiration. I had spent my whole childhood after the age of six
living in Pittsburgh, and I didn’t know a single Latino woman. The women, in
a broader sense, in my life hadn’t felt any more empowered to me. Adolescent
girls seemed to be living in a dark and empty abyss of insecurity and feigned
happiness. Girls who wore low cut shirts with brightly colored pushup bras,
their chests looking raw and almost juvenile. Who constantly pulled the collar
up whenever they felt stares. Girls who spent time with boys who scared them.
Girls who giggled uncomfortably at jokes at their own expense, because they
were pushed into the corner of complying and seeming silly or easy, or being
known as obnoxious and rude. Girls who had tried to apply cheap eyeshadow
they lifted from the corner store, sloppy and creased. Hands constantly drifting
to their eyes, letting hair fall over their face as if wishing they hadn’t worn it in
the first place. Mustard yellows that accentuated the sallowness of their skin.
Bright blues that accented the dark circles under their eyes. Like bruises.
Now it’s two o’clock. A movie is playing, but I’m not sure which one. I am
drifting in and out, the dialogue of the television suspended in my sleep. Thick
and fragrant smoke from her brother’s room hangs in the damp air, making my
head spin. My friend has fallen asleep, her head tilted to the side, a small line
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
of drool down her chin. I wonder if she is afraid of him. Sometimes she flinches
when she heard the door open. The only time a girl looks happy is when she
is sleeping.
I go to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
The cabinet is filled with an assortment of cheap plastic cups, rough with
scratches. The sink makes a soft clunking noise as the water runs. The bubbles
set. I take a sip.
As I walk back to the living room, I feel something cool seep into my sock.
It’s the puddle of beer, which has seeped into the floor and left a deep, mahogany
stain. I take off the wet and stained sock, wringing it in my hands slightly. I
step over the puddle and into the living room.
The volume on the TV is low and persistent. I can hear music playing from
somewhere, likely her brother’s room upstairs. I see headlights flash in the
windows, and my heart freezes for a moment, thinking that her dad is home,
but I hear the car retreat into the dark of the street, and my heart beats slows.
As I fold my body under a thinning, frayed blanket that smells of mildew and
laundry detergent, I barely have to time to think before I am pulled into a
restless sleep. Four or five hours of peace and dark. Four or five hours that I
have to look happy.
16

Ciara Sing
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Short Prose
A Pop Quiz to Make Myself Even
More Confused About Identity
(Non-Fiction)
True or False: In the South, there’s the “one drop rule,” meaning that a single
drop of “black blood” makes a person black.
True or False: When you look at the unbleached manila birth certificate,
you can’t deny that the far-too-neat-signature-for-a-man splotched in black ink
is your father, your flesh and blood.
True or False: In court, cases have been known to use the “traceable amount
rule” during Jim Crow segregation.
True or False: During a Kwanzaa celebration, you found yourself amongst
students that very well could be strangers but never felt safer. Tears brimmed in
the corner of your eyes as you fingered the figurine decorated in straw.
True or False: Umajaa is the idea of being centered with one’s self.
True or False: In seventh grade, you were called “tragic mulatto” in an
attempt for you to harm yourself.
True or False: You consider yourself a tragic mulatto.
True or False: You buy your hair products in the ebony aisle at Rite-Aid
with your white mother.
True or False: As your hand pulled the black button of the lighter, you
thought you could see yourself in the orange flame melting the black wax on
top of the wooden Kinara.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
True or False: Mental slavery is the state of mind where discerning between
liberation and enslavement is twisted.
True or False: You get dismissive when people begin to ask about your
family dynamics. You try to fluff out your curls as if the kinkiness can hide your
self-consciousness about excessive navel-gazing regarding your racial identity.
True or False: During black history month, your mother used to dress you
up as famous black pioneers.
True or False: When you think of your mother you only think of coffee
grinds in your hair, baking soda and late night cleaning.
True or False: Your sister use to think you were adopted but you never once
questioned her love for you.
True or False: In the U.S., black and white interracial relationships only
make up about 23%.
True or False: You’ve never been able to get your haircut at a normal hair
salon.
True or False: Race is defined by the principle of “hypodescent,” in which
anyone with any known African ancestry was defined by black. This one-drop
motivates eugenic fears.
True or False: When you’re sitting at the dining table and your father begins
to talk about who you might take to your school dance, you freeze up. You know
his unspoken question is what type of boy are you attracted to, even if you’re
attracted to boys. You struggle with the answer. You grip your napkin against
your flattened-out thigh. You take your time chewing the rice. You should
answer correctly. He doesn’t want you to be attracted to white men because he
doesn’t want his grandchildren to ever feel disconnected with their black heritage
or him. You mutter you’re going with friends instead.
True or False: You are both the oppressed and the oppressor.
True or False: When you go to the barber on East Ohio Street with your
18

dad, the one with cracked up concrete and a man posted on the corner, the
non-regulars question if you’re his daughter. They call you pretty and eye you
up when your dad gets turned around.
Short Prose
True or False: Racial healing occurs after a lifetime.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Aliza Hamid
Grade 12
Gateway High School
A Series of Unfortunate
Subway Events
(Non-Fiction)
Before starting eleventh grade in the fall, I skipped gleefully under the afternoon
June sun along the Old William Penn sidewalk towards Subway for my first job
interview while grasping onto my unsophisticated resume pertaining to nothing
about skills or past work experiences. The almost white paper expressed my
personality traits such as how I was a happy, kind, people-person and could
absorb new skills like a sponge; however, I soon learned the unfortunate outcomes
of a first job. Getting a first job makes every teen believes that he or she
will purchase a used car, buy new clothes, go out to dinner with friends, and
take part in any fun activities, but just as the reality of a job hits every teenager
like a car, I got hit hard by the reality bus instead and understood that I should
not have to deal with events that make me unhappy.
Sitting down in the air-conditioned fast-food chain at a sticky booth, I took
in the aroma of fresh baked bread flying to me while staring at the bustling traffic
outside of a window the size of a wall, which I would eventually want to run
into after two years of working with horrific coworkers, abominable customers,
and the god-awful work environment. To sit underneath the warm yellow lights
allowed me to clearly see the face of a man with mainly gums in his mouth
and four teeth spread apart almost as if a magnetic force did not want them to
collide. Brian, the manager of the Subway, got up and shook my hand, and I
started to discuss why I applied: “I need work experience and money for a car.”
Laughing, Brian replied, “Do you want this job?”
“Yes. It’s summer too, I can start today.”
With his gap-toothed smile, he spit as he said, “It’s yours.”
After one week of training with my co-worker Joe, his smoking addiction
overcame his thought process, and he made me work alone for thirty minutes
while he went on a smoke break, telling me that I will not find too many customers
entering the store and that I should have an easy time working. Surprisingly,
20

a large group of people entered the store, and I tried my best to speed across the
line, making the food, ringing up customers, and bagging. After burning five
sandwiches, dropping four on the floor, and crying in front of ten customers, I
exhaustedly witnessed Joe wandering back to the store an hour later to ask me
how working alone for an hour went.
Sticking a pack of Marlboros in his pocket, he asked, “No customers came,
right?”
Wiping my tears away and picking up my fake smile, I slyly kicked a piece
of charcoal burnt bread under the counter and responded to Joe’s question with
a simple saying: “easy peasy lemon squeezy.”
Eventually, Subway gained a new employee who I became friends with,
Michael Holmes. Michael started to become my main coworker because we
could work the same hours, so we met a diverse group of customers together.
One day, while sitting in a state of fatigue under the burning fluorescent lights
on the shiny metallic counter, Michael and I stared at each other in boredom,
half-falling asleep. Soon we heard the ding! of the front door opening, and two
giant men stomped in.
“Finally, people,” Michael smiled as he said those words, but he would soon
regret them.
I could only let out a mundane sigh and walk to the front counter to start
the sandwiches and exhibit no traits that would make customers want to have
a conversation with me.
Plainly I asked the basic question, “What kind of bread?”
“Herbs and Cheese, you should smile more.”
Ignoring the end remark, I asked the next question, “What kind of
sandwich?”
“Italian BMT, where are you from?”
Another unwanted remark made me stare at the men with strict eyes and
clenched teeth while I asked the next question, “What kind of cheese?”
“Pepper jack and toasted. Hey, tall man!” They turned to Mike staring at
me to see if I would yell at them, “Are you guys together?”
“No, we aren’t.” I really wished Mike had lied, but I could see the fear in
his lanky 190-pound body next to both of the 250-pound men triple his size.
Thinking they had the right to flirt awfully with me, the one man started
to talk more to me about how popular he was among ladies.
“You won’t need this job if you come with me, I got a lot of girls working
for me.” His creepy gold tooth gave off a urine color instead of shiny gold in
the light.
Trying to get rid of the two men, I responded, “Ummm no, have a nice day.”
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Persistent, the bigger man with the gold chain kept ogling while his sidekick
watched him speak. Because I felt disgusted by their talk, I walked to the
back halfway through their sandwich and let Michael deal with them. Scared,
Mike walked back and asked me to come back out front.
Raising his arms in the air, he said, “They’ll kill me, Aliza.”
“They aren’t even talking to you or about you! Why are you scared, dumb***,
I’m not coming up front, you can deal with them.”
He walked back front and let out the words, “Ugh, fine.”
Still hollering, the men talked louder so I could hear what they said while
I sat in the back peeking out from the corner to check on Michael.
“She’s pretty, isn’t she?” said the sidekick in a creepy, grim manner.
“Uh, yeah, I don’t know,” said Michael as he rang them up.
The pimp protested against Michael, “We’ll stay until she comes back out.”
“She won’t, have a nice day,” and with that, Michael ran back to me and
exclaimed they wouldn’t leave.
After waiting for ten extra minutes, the men laughed at Michael and said he
looked nice then called him back up to the counter to ask for a piece of paper.
“Give her this number, tell her to ask for Big Daddy.”
Sitting in the back, I started laughing at that nickname. Michael handed
me the paper, I turned to him, and we just laughed over how peculiar of a
situation we handled.
Not even looking at the number, I ripped the paper in half.
Whispering, Michael said, “Shhh, Aliza! They’re still here by the back
door.”
“I don’t care, they can suck it.”
Ding! The back door opened and the stomping disappeared.
Over the course of half a year at Subway, I met more odd customers, made
some regulars, and watched new employees that came and went. However, I
was the only girl who worked there. Richard Sentimer, the nicest guy working
at Subway, told me he made more money than me. Furious, I got the truth out
of all the guys working at Subway one by one through throwing a tantrum and
screaming at each one of their faces. Confronting my boss and new manager
became the next step, but I found out our new manager, Allyse, and the owner,
Greg, were a father-daughter duo. Constant reminders that I started before
all the guys at Subway, worked the most hours, and did the most work on the
checklist, did not get me a raise. Plan B meant I had to throw another tantrum.
I showed up early to work while Allyse worked in her dingy square office
with a hole in the wall after someone threw a hammer to it, and I asked her
22

for a raise and explained that all the guys make more money than me for no
reason. The guys did not even have past work experience to allow them to make
more money.
Allyse sighed and said “Aliza, I don’t decide who gets a raise and who
doesn’t, Greg does.”
Rage built inside me because I knew she lied straight to my face, and I let
it all out. “Richard, Mike, Nick, and Phil all told me that you gave them a raise,
they showed me their paychecks, they all started working way after I started, and
I’m the one making minimum wage? All of them, except for Richard, don’t do
**** at their job and sit here watching TV, playing on their phones, and harass
me while I’m the one doing everything, and I have to constantly yell at them to
do work, and I don’t get a raise? What do I need to ****ing do, Alysse? Huh?
Grow a penis? You don’t give a crap cause your dad owns like twenty-seven
subways and you don’t need the money, but I’m tired of the guys making jokes
that I get paid less and I want a raise now.”
I wished a fly would fly into her mouth as she stared at me with her mouth
open and her eyes wide, in shock, and most likely a little fear, she finally said,
“Yeah, your next paycheck will have a raise, I’m gonna go, bye.”
Standing a little taller, I texted the guys and gave them a piece of my mind,
and then I opened my paycheck two days later and smiled as I noticed that it
had increased.
Even though I started making more money, the work environment made me
more uncomfortable than getting sand inside clothes at the beach. Around the
holidays, drunks and drug users started stumbling into Subway, and working
alone at night caused me to keep a look out instead of falling asleep at work.
New Years’ night, I worked the closing shift, and a very drunk couple walked
in, grabbing onto each other to keep standing. The stench of alcohol filled
my nose as the drunk woman blurted out her order, “I just want a salad with
cucumbers and chicken!”
“Any other veggies? Lettuce or spinach?” I thought she may want other
veggies, hence the purpose of a salad.
“Nope, just chicken and cucumbers.”
I started on the next customer and turned to the drunk couple and muttered,
“Alright, here you go. Have a nice evening.” In the middle of talking to
a regular customer, I heard the loud metal door of the drunk couple’s truck
slam and the angry tomato-red man screaming about the salad, “What the hell
is this?!”
Nonchalantly I said, “A salad.”
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
“What the hell is this? This isn’t a ****ing salad, it’s just cucumbers and
chicken.”
Starting to become sassy, I responded, “According to your girlfriend, that’s
a salad.”
He grumbled, “I want a refund.”
“I can’t do that, I’m not the manager.” Losing my patience, I also exclaimed
“I’m going to call the police if you don’t chill, man.”
“Chill? Really? Make me a new ****ing salad.”
“Ok, what do you want in it? Lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, what?”
“A ****ing salad.”
I think he and his girlfriend were Subway virgins and did not understand
the concept that they needed to tell me what goes in their food. I gave him the
choices of the vegetables, but disappointingly, his last two brain cells could not
create a synapse. Infuriated, I took a bowl and threw veggies in it, talking to
the man sweeter than candy to purposely get on his nerves and make him feel
like an imbecile. After finishing the salad for the ignoramus, in my most cheery
cartoon voice, I smiled and screamed at the man’s face, “Have a nice night!” I
showed all 32 of my teeth and waved at him like a stranger waving bye-bye to a
baby in a grocery store. Cowardly, the salad man turned around and mumbled
the single word his peanut-sized brain could create: “Night.”
By the second year of my afterschool Subway job, Subway started to go
under. Not everyday does an employee get to see drug deals on the roof of the
building they work at, in the men’s bathroom, behind the dumpster, and at a
“gardening store” used as a front. As a closer, I had the grand activity of throwing
the garbage away every single night. Garbage bins sat all the way across the
back parking lot right on the edge of the woods, probably 40 feet away from my
car, that meant I run back and forth three to four times every night carrying
multiple boxes and bags, giving a murderer three to four chances to sprint at
me. After running away from various drug deals, random cars by the edge of
the woods, and a Fox’s Pizza employee who thought that following me to the
dumpster to scare me would be a fun prank, I became too frightened to close
alone. Explaining the incidents to Alysse started to make me tiresome because
she did not believe me. However, I got the rest of the guys to close one night
and see what occurred, they also notified Alysse of the delinquency. Michael
and I sat outside one May afternoon playing frisbee and because I got bored after
five minutes I noticed the “gardening” shop left their back door open. Having
no fear, I told Michael that I will sneak into the store through the back to see
what “plants” they sold because we found it bizarre how teenagers and college
24

students kept going to the “gardening” shop, when in reality, teens do not even
give a crap about gardening.
Hoping off the trunk of my car I turned to Michael, “Let’s do some
sleuthing”
Standing on my car, Michael laughed and warned me, “Aliza don’t walk in
there, he’s literally in the store right now, don’t do this Nancy Drew.”
“What’s the worst that’s gonna happen? I’ll just walk in and look around
while he’s up front and if I find anything odd I’ll tell you.”
Peering from the door, I waited till the giant “gardening” shop owner
walked up front again and I ran inside the dark room lit up only by blue tube
lights over little plants, walking to a back counter I found a tray of unlabeled
plants beneath a table. Footsteps started to approach the back of the store and
I scrambled to get out, but then I heard the owner’s rapid voice.
“What’re you doing in here?” Moving closer and faster toward me, he jogged
to the back and I started speed-walking backwards out of the store still facing
him and trying to talk.
With a shaky voice I gave a vague lie, “Uh nothing, just the door was open
and me and Mike wanted to buy flowers, bye.”
He closed the heavy metal back door and never left it open again.
Police cars started to patrol the lot every night, but once the sketchy activities
came to a halt, the police officer decided to leave for good which allowed
for the night time crime cycle to begin once again. Not being able to handle
the stress of Subway, I complained to my friends and family constantly who all
gave me the same solution to my problem, to quit.
Fourth of July, the day the thirteen colonies regarded themselves as a new
nation and gained their independence, and also the day I quit Subway and gained
my independence. Experiencing my first job of working at Subway allowed me
to understand that I should not have to do anything that makes me unhappy or
unsafe, such as working somewhere with an awful environment or dealing with
zany coworkers. While my two years flew by, I created a fake name, Joy, skeevy
customers who asked for my name and number always got the name Joy and
the number to a rejection hotline. I keep my fake name tag with me to remind
myself that at one point in my life I had to create a fake name because of how
irritated I became of work and now when I see the fake name tag I realize that
ever since I quit my old Subway job, I am actually full of real joy.
Short Prose
25

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Amanda Lu
Grade 11
North Allegheny Senior High School
You are me. I am you.
(Non-Fiction)
A series of vignettes
Today, I am one year old.
Plop. Plop. My feet crash against the hard, gray floor.
I count cracks. One. Plop. Plop. Two. Plop. Plop. Three.
Careful, Xiaomei!
Four. Plop. BOOM.
My face crashes against the hard, gray floor.
4
Nainai, don’t go back to China. Stay a little longer here. Tell me a story. Nainai!
She walks toward me and lies down. I place my head on her warm chest.
She brushes my hair. She tells me about the Monkey King.
I fall asleep.
I wake up. The sun is shining on my face. The birds are chirping. I turn to
my side, and there is no one there.
4
Amanda’s Chinese is well above her age group, my teacher muses.
Baba smiles. Well, Chinese was her first language, and we only speak Chinese at
home, so that is expected. What we really need to work on is her English.
English will be easy to learn; you live in America after all. Just remember to
never prioritize English over Chinese. Amanda is a Chinese girl, always was and
always will be.
Baba rolls his eyes light-heartedly. Of course.
26

4
Hi, I try to say to one of the pretty girls with yellow hair.
Her eyebrows are furrowed. She looks at me with a confused expression.
“Hell-loh.”
“Hah-lo?” I spit out.
She shakes her head. “HELL-LOH.” I try to pronounce the strange word
once again. She continues to shake her head. Her yellow curls bounce up and
down.
She grabs my hand, and together, we run around the playground, communicating
only through smiles and laughter.
Short Prose
4
. . . and we’ll take you back to Tiananmen Square, your favorite spot. We will do
anything to make your trip absolutely unforgettable. Nainai touches the screen with
her hand and blows me a kiss. I respond by sticking my chubby cheeks on the
webcam, and my grandma pretends to kiss her computer monitor.
I’ll buy you lots of toys, Yeye interjects.
Stop trying to compete with me. Xiaomei loves me the most, my grandma says,
and we all laugh together.
Before I say goodbye to Nainai, I tell Yeye to cover his ears.
It’s true, Nainai, I tell her. I do love you the most.
4
There. Mama adds the finishing touch, a beautiful red rose petal, to my hair. I am
wearing my bright red qipao in honor of the New Year. I feel like a million bucks.
You look beautiful, Xiaomei. Your friends will be so jealous.
I smile to myself because I know she’s right.
She isn’t.
When I get to school, I see countless kids pointing and laughing. They yell
obscene comments toward me. I indignantly announce, “ching-chong isn’t even
a word in any of the Asian languages!” but the kids continue to cruelly laugh.
My friend lends me her big, black coat, and I drape it over the shiny red
silk like a dark cloud of shame.
When I come home from school, I storm off into my room. Mama asks me,
how was school today? I don’t answer her.
I rip the ugly red dress off my body and throw it onto the floor. Tears are
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
streaming down my face, and through my fogged vision, the dress that used to
shine so brightly looks like a sullen heap of red ash.
The dress that used to be worth a million bucks was now worthless.
4
Baba, I cry, I don’t want to go to that stupid Chinese school. I want to play with my
friends on Sunday.
You have to. It’s not a choice. His tone is indignant, but I can sense a hint of
sadness in his eyes, maybe even fear.
Baba can be so stubborn sometimes. I wanted to fight back, but I knew it
would lead nowhere. So, I had to get creative.
4
Your daughter is out of control, the Chinese teacher informs my father. She has
been extremely disrespectful, not only to us, but also to her peers. She is one of our
best pupils, but we will have to discontinue her education if she keeps up this behavior.
I smirk at him and expect a snarky comment or look in response. However,
I saw something entirely different from what I expected. There was no anger
in his eyes.
I immediately stop smirking.
We walk to the car. He stares at the ground, while I pick at the skin on my
hands. I figure he isn’t speaking to me because he is waiting to release all his
rage during the 40 minute car ride home. When we reach our car, I compliantly
leap in the backseat, thinking that if I act obediently now, he will spare me half
the lecture. I brace my ears.
There is no lecture.
We ride back home in complete silence.
That was the last time I ever went to Chinese school.
4
“Dad. Dad. Are you busy right now?”
No, come in.
He sits in his chair, feet propped on the desk. He’s focused on the keyboard
and doesn’t look up.
“Can I dye my hair brown?”
No. Clack. Clack.
28

“Why not?”
The clacking stops, and he rests his hands on the table. He looks up
incredulously. Amanda, why do you want to dye your hair?
My cheeks start to burn. “Well, it’s just that . . .” I look up at my father,
whose mouth is creased into a tight line. The disdain in his eyes is painfully
obvious. “Just let me dye my hair!”
He slams his fist down. Do you know how lucky you are to be born with
beautiful, black hair? Why do you want to look like those white girls? You’re beautiful
the way you are.
Hot tears began to overflow and that stupid, all-too-familiar lump rose in
my throat. Baba, I don’t want to look white! I just want a different hair color! Why
is that so much to ask for?
He shakes his head at me. You’re not dying your hair. Don’t ask me ever again.
Short Prose
4
Amanda, you know Nainai hasn’t seen you in forever. Even worse: your Chinese is
deteriorating by the second. Please, go back and just visit this summer. Do it for your
family. Do it for Nainai.
I sigh exasperatedly and violently throw my hands up in the air. “Baba, you
KNOW I don’t have time to go back this summer! Stop pressuring me!”
His face contorts into a look of hurt, and I feel a familiar lumpy sensation
at the back of my throat. I look away, refusing to meet his eyes.
He sulks away as I trace circles into the ground.
4
Everyone around me is getting absolutely wasted, and suddenly, I feel compelled
to follow them. As I take a swig of my first drink, I hear someone mutter “chink.”
Laughter follows.
I walk around the crowded room. People stare back. They start to whisper to
their friends. Some of them are pretty candid about their thoughts; they wonder
aloud thoughts along the lines of “shouldn’t you be doing math homework?”
and “we don’t serve dog here.”
I lock myself in the bathroom with a bottle of alcohol. I tense up every time I
hear laughter; it feels like the whole world is laughing at me. I feel a familiar
burning sensation in the back of my throat. Maybe this time, it’s just the vodka.
I stare in the mirror. An unfamiliar face stares back.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Her dull, black hair casts a grim shadow over her face. Her brown eyes look
lifeless and lacklustre like mud on the bottom of my shoes.
Who the hell even am I?
I wobble out of the bathroom. All the chatter around me transforms into a
ringing sensation in my ears. I start to feel extremely dizzy, and I try to maintain
my balance by holding onto the wall. It doesn’t work.
I collapse on the ground. My head hits the hard, gray floor.
The last thing I see before closing my eyes is the blurry shapes of the people
surrounding me.
It’s a house full of people, and somehow, I still manage to feel all alone.
4
“. . . and it freaking sucks, because all I want is to get rid of my stupid black hair.”
“Seriously?” my best friend Mara lazily inquires. Her eyes are closed, and
she is practically talking into her pillow. “Why?”
“I just don’t like the way it looks, I guess.”
Mara suddenly sits up in the bed, fully awake, so she can look me in the
eyes. “Listen. Girl. We all have our insecurities. Yours is your black hair for
some weird, unknown reason. Look, I shouldn’t have to tell you this, because
it’s blatantly obvious, but your hair is gorgeous. It’s luscious, thick and it literally
doesn’t look like hair; it looks like silk that has been dipped in dark black India
ink. And I mean that one hundred percent as a compliment.”
I smile to myself. Mara always found a way to make me feel better. “Do you
really mean that, or are you just saying that because it’s 3 in the morning and
you don’t want to deal with me complaining for the rest of the night?”
She rolls her eyes. “Now you’re just fishing for compliments. To answer
your question: it’s both. You’re annoying me, and I’m super tired. But seriously,
your hair is gorgeous. You’re beautiful in general. I wish I had exotic features.
I literally look like a cracker.” With that comment, she slides back under the
covers and lands face-first into her pillow.
I immediately run to the bathroom to examine my face in the mirror. The
compliments she had half-assedly given me completely changed my perspective
about beauty. I realized, in that moment, that it didn’t matter that I didn’t look
like the people around me because I was beautiful in my own, unique manner.
“Huh,” I say to no one in particular. “I guess I never thought of myself
that way.”
30

4
How has your life been? How are your grades? Your friends? It’s been so long since we
talked last. Nainai smiles at me and I smile back.
I’ve been better. I miss you. I want to tell her more. I want to tell her about
the guy I just kissed. I want to tell her about the research I’ve been conducting
over the summer on bone marrow cells and the heart-wrenching but highly
relatable young adult novel I just finished. Yet it was so hard to connect the
words in my brain; it was so hard to communicate with my grandmother, even
though Chinese was my first language.
Are you still going to Chinese school? She continues to spew out questions that
I can’t answer fast enough.
I love you, I muster out for what seems to be the 50th time. The more and
more I say it, the less significance it has.
How tragic is it to be unable to communicate in your native language? My
face burns with shame as I tell her I love you for the 51st time before hanging up.
I should go back to China.
Short Prose
4
Nainai overslept today.
I open the door to her bedroom, and she laid there solemnly, her breathing
barely audible. I tiptoe over, overly conscious of the plop plop sound my feet make.
She laid in perfect solitude; the only movement was the subtle rise and fall
of her chest. She looked so at ease: the world could end that minute and she
would lay in the same position . . . so blissfully unaware.
I feel an overwhelming wave of adoration for my lovely grandmother, and
I can’t help but lean down and kiss her temple. Her eyes immediately flutter
open, and upon seeing me, she smiles. A gaping hole took the place of where
her fake teeth usually are.
She was always extremely insecure about the way she looked without her
fake teeth. It’ll scare you, she’d say when I’d tell her that she didn’t need to wear
them all the time. It’ll just remind you how your old grandma is getting uglier and
uglier with age.
So it was then, that exact moment when Nainai flashed me her big, toothless
smile, when I realized there was something so pure about her happiness—my
mere presence had made her so giddy that she forgot about her insecurities.
I wanted to reciprocate the love she had for me. I could tell her I love you,
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
but in the grand scheme words mean nothing. I and love and you seemed just
as meaningless and A and B and C.
I felt uncomfortable. Guilty. Guilty for my lack of respect. Guilty because I
was unable to cogently express my thoughts because of a language barrier that
could have been avoided had I put more effort into learning Chinese. Guilty
because I hadn’t come back to China.
My eyes welled up with tears.
My grandma, sensing absolutely none of my shame, gave me a timeworn
smile. Xiaomei, she coos lazily, throwing her hands above her head. I am just so
sleepy today. Come, lie down with me.
One second, my head is on the pillow next to hers, and I am staring at the
ceiling; next, I am trapped in her warm embrace. My head is strapped against
her chest, and I am sobbing into her white cotton shirt. She runs her wrinkled
fingers through my hair.
My cries gradually wane, and I ask her to tell me a story. She nods enthusiastically
and jumps into her favorite story: the first time I began to walk.
We were at Tiananmen Square, right in front of the garden. It was around the
beginning of spring and all the white lilies were finally starting to bloom.
She vividly describes the pink flush of my chubby cheeks and my shrill
laugh. She recalls the way I would tenaciously drag my stubby legs forward,
determined to go as far as I can.
You fell straight on your fat little face, and I was so worried about you that my
heart could have stopped right there, she tells me. She grabs my hand and caresses
my thumb. I expected loud sobs. How couldn’t I? You were a baby after all.
But you started laughing, and I swear, it was the most beautiful sound I had ever
heard in my life. You sounded like an angel.
Oh, how her eyes lit up! With every word, a wrinkle would fade and her
eyes would gain another sparkle. She looked so cheerful and vibrant, like the
way she looked 15 years ago.
That was so long ago, she tells me, yet I remember it all. I remember it like it
was yesterday.
Fresh, American air.
My dad greets me at the Pittsburgh airport gates around 12:47 AM.
We ride in silence.
4
32

So, he interjects, what was the most memorable part from your trip to China?
I had to think about it, I really did. There were so many things I wanted
to say: the priceless look of my grandparents’ faces when they saw me for the
first time in three years; the annoyingly zealous salespeople who would say
anything to get that 10% commission; the liveliness of the flourishing cities;
walking to farmer’s markets within 1 kilometer and eating the freshest fruit
nature had to offer; finally feeling like I belonged, because everywhere, people
looked just like me. . . .
A minute passes.
“I guess I liked everything.”
Short Prose
4
Today, I am seventeen years old.
I stare in the mirror. This time, a familiar face stares back.
Her raven black hair cascades over her shoulders like a waterfall of hope. I
stare into her rich brown crescent-shaped eyes.
You are beautiful, I tell her. Worthy. You are Chinese American. You are me.
I am you.
She smiles. I smile.
33

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Brianna Longo
Grade 9
Western Allegheny High School
The Outcasts
(Fiction)
It was as cold as the North Pole, most would say. The winds were picking up
with their howling gusts. The snow got heavier, and heavier as it fell onto the
mountainside. It was hard to bear but I toughed through it, shacking the brutal
snow off my back occasionally.
Personally, I couldn’t stand these types of storms. The air and ground get
to frigid for me. But in these circumstances, I had to travel as far away from
them as I could.
As the wind gusts got stronger, I flattened my ears against my head and
curled my tail, so it resembled a long snake. When I looked up all I could see
was white. I sighed. White. I hated the color white. It was too much of a dull
color for me. That, and the fact that the dragon that had banished me had
white markings.
“Focus,” I scoffed to myself, “You have to get out of this storm.”
As I put one leg in front of the other, I noticed that the snow on the ground
got deeper, and deeper as I went on. But I had to be persistent. I couldn’t back
down now, even though my whole body had to be suffering from hypothermal
now.
Suddenly, my legs stopped working and I collapsed in the confining snow. I
sat there, alone, cold, and scared for a couple of minutes, with the giant clumps
of snow rushing at my face. Minutes passed until I got way too cold for comfort
and fainted. . . .
When I woke up, I had no more snow on me and was in a cave. A dark cave.
The only light that shown was from a sizzling fire right in front of me. When
I looked up, I saw another dragon . . . twice the size of me.
34

He was scary-looking and strange but muscular. When I got a good look
at him, he looked familiar, like someone from my own tribe. He wasn’t at all
different and was built the same as me, but with purple markings instead of
blue, like mine. However, he looked mysterious. His head wasn’t bare. It had
the remains of a dragon’s skull on it . . .
Millions of questions raced through my mind the more I stared at him.
“Your name.” The dragon demanded, interrupting my thoughts.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I was truly terrified
now.
He sighed and glanced toward the entrance of the cave.
“You know you shouldn’t be out in a snow storm,” he added.
“Ye-Ye-Yes,” I stuttered.
Then he turned back at me and flattened his ears and bitterly spat, “What
tribe did you come from, and why are you here? A mountain that snows frequently
is no place for a young dragon like yourself.”
I shook my head, to rid it of my memories, and leaned toward the fire for
warmth, ignoring the question the menacing dragon asked.
The giant dragon stomped one foot that made the whole cave shutter in fear.
“What is your name?” He repeated.
“My name is Midnight,” I finally spoke.
“Skull,” he said.
“What?” I questioned.
“My name is Skull,” he repeated. “Now, what tribe do you come from, and
why are you here? You’re lucky you didn’t die out there.”
“I come from the cave tribe,” I said as I sat up to meet his gaze.
Skull made a toothy grin as I said the words. Then, licked his sharpened
teeth. “The cave tribe you say?”
“Yes.” I uncertainly stated.
“I remember those days,” he paused and flexed his claws and crouched, ready
to attack, “When those traitors turned on me, and banned me!”
Then he jumped over the fire and pinned me to the ground with his claws
flexed out as far as they could. I struggled to break free from his powerful grasp.
“Tell me,” he snapped as he shoved me harder to the ground with his sharp
outstretched claws,” Tell me what they said about me!”
Then it hit me. He was the dragon from the stories! When we were young,
we were taught a story about a purple marked dragon. When he was born, he
was mean and cruel to the whole clan. As he got older, our mindful leader,
Nightmare, gave him one last chance to prove himself. Then, one day he was left
Short Prose
35

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
alone in our egg nursery and blew them into bits. Every last egg . . . destroyed.
Mothers and fathers cried, knowing that they would never be able to raise the
little baby dragons inside each egg. As a punishment, he was banished into the
unknown world, left to die and he was never heard from again.
Of course, all the young dragons thought it was just another myth, but now
I believe it one-hundred percent.
I told him the story, hoping that it would be enough to save my life.
After hissing the whole tale to him, he un-flexed his claws and leaped off
me.
As I got up, my bones ached from having so much weight on top of me.
I looked down cowardly and shuffled my claws, while whispering, “None of
us believed the story. We all thought it was just a myth. We. . . .”
“Enough!” He snapped.
After a moment passed I couldn’t help but ask, “Was it true? Were you that
specific dragon?”
“Yes,” he bellowed.
“Really?” I questioned.
“No”
“What?”
“Well . . . yes and no. I admit that I was bad as a kid, but I never struck
those eggs. I promise you that.”
“Then what happened?”
He sighed, then spoke, “When I was little, I thought I was the best dragon
ever because I was the only one who trained to become a leader. So, I started
acting as if I was strongest leader ever. No one ever liked me for it, especially the
leader. But when I got older, I became wiser and gave up the leader thing.” Skull
paused and looked at the ground, “The leader still didn’t think I was changed.”
He turned his head to look at my stunned eyes. “Therefore, I got blamed. I got
blamed for the nursery exploding. Then I was banned forever from the tribe
and moved to the mountains.” He paused, “I hate the color white.”
“Funny,” I thought, “I do too.”
“When I look out into the snow, I can’t help thinking of him. I hate him.”
He made a low growling noise to show his anger.
“But the legend said that you were the only one who was near the nursery.”
I interrogated.
“I was,” he confessed, “But I wasn’t the one who blew up the eggs.”
He had a wild eye. Something in my gut told me he was crazy.
36

“I’m not crazy,” he said as if he were reading my mind, “I’m telling you the
truth.”
There was a long period of silence, and both of us just sat, quietly, looking
at each other.
Until Skull spoke, “Why are you here? Why don’t you just go back home?
You have no use here.”
I looked down at the ground.
“You did something wrong, didn’t you?” He asked.
“Why are you asking?” I stood up and sneered.
“Because,” he growled, “You very well might have a chance of living here.”
I grunted, “You’re lonely, aren’t you? You just want me to tell you, so you
could feel better about yourself!”
When he looked at me, I knew I had said the truth. His eyes told me.
“And you’re just trying to avoid the question because you feel guilty about
what you have done!” He rambled back.
I looked down at the rocky cave floor. We were both spitting the truth,
but we hated to say it.
“Fine,” I said, and took a long pause to gather up the courage to say what
I had done. “I killed a dragon . . .”
Skull chuckled.
“It’s not funny!” I flared, “And I would have still been in the tribe if it
wasn’t for you!”
“Me?” He said, “Why me?”
“Because,” I muttered, “The leader thought I’d become another you, so I
got banned.”
“So, what you’re telling me is that if I wasn’t born, you wouldn’t have been
banned for killing another dragon?”
“Well . . . you got away with it.”
He looked at me, startled. “How do you know that?”
“The story said it. It said you killed a dragon out of pure murder.”
“Night deserved to die.” He said as his pupils turned into black slits. “He
was a pure traitor. No good for anyone.” His wings flared with anger.
I gulped. This dragon wasn’t the sweetest peach on the tree.
“Get out of here while you still can,” my conscience urged me.
“What else did they accused me of?” He screamed.
I got up, didn’t say a word and headed towards the entrance. I put my head
down, avoid eye contact with Skull’s blazing eyes.
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
I was almost at the cave entrance when a rock was hurled at me and hit
me in the head.
“Oww!” I whined.
Then I looked down and realized the thing that hit me wasn’t a rock at all. It
was a chewed bone that had daggers in it. Then another one hit me at my snout.
“Quit it!” I exclaimed, “All I want to do is get . . .”
At once, Skull hurled towards me and took me down with his powerful
claws, ripping at my head.
I blacked out. . . .
When I woke up, a giant rock was crushing my body. I tried to move, but the
rock was too heavy, and every time I did, and excruciating pain came from my
fragile, cracked ribs.
No one was in the cave. I was alone. I guessed it was a good thing because
I had time to think of an escape plan.
It was about an hour until Skull came in with a long, lizard-looking creature
hanging from his jaws. He came towards me with it and dropped it at my snout.
With a grimace he said, “Eat.”
“No,” I blurted, “Why should I?”
“Fine,” he said, “Have it your way,” and slid the thing right out of my reach,
“Earn your share.”
Then he stalked over to the roaring fire and plopped down next to it. All
he did was stare at it.
“How long has it been since you woke up?” He finally asked.
“An hour,” I grunted, “Why did you put this bolder on me?”
“Well I couldn’t have you go anywhere, could I?”
“Get it off, now!” I screamed, “Get it off, or else . . . !”
“Or else what?” He snorted, “You’ll call one of your precious friends to help
you? If I wasn’t mistaken, I could have sworn you said you were banned from
your tribe, and all your friends detested you.”
“I never said my friends hated me,” I huffed while scrambling under a rock.
“You never denied it before,” Skull smirked.
After a short period of silence, I asked, “How long was I out?”
“A night.”
“And you had this giant rock on me the whole time?!”
“No, “he retorted, “Just while I was hunting.”
Skull stood up and headed towards the entrance.
38

“Wait!” I cried.
“What?” He declared.
“Where are you going?”
“Lonely, aren’t you?”
“No! I just, well. . . .”
“If you get hungry, there is food in front of you”
I struggled under the rock, “I can’t reach it.”
“Well,” he said, about to take off, “You should have thought about that before
you rejected it,” and flew off into the white abyss.
After a couple of minutes, I was so exhausted from trying to get the boulder
off me that I slept.
Short Prose
When I woke up from my slumber, I noticed it was dark. It had to be midnight,
and Skull still wasn’t back.
I tried leaning myself a certain way to move the rock off, but the way I was
positioned, only hurt me worse. I groaned. This rock will be the death of me. I
pushed the rock further. Now, there was an excruciating pain in my wings and
torso. I screamed, but no one heard me. The pain hurt so bad that tears ran
down from my pained eyes.
I pushed the rock over a little more. The worst pain I have ever felt only hurt
for a couple of seconds because the rock rolled off me. I was free!
Now I had my chance to leave. With Skull gone, and the entrance unguarded,
I could escape.
I crept up to the opening and poked my head out. The freezing snow fell
on my face and I immediately launched backwards. The cave felt warm with
the fire, but I had to leave. And quick before Skull had a chance to come back.
I forced my body to enter the frigid cold snow storm. I ran up the mountain
into where the snow was beating me. Luckily, I found a forest of trees on it.
“I should take shelter there, so I won’t be so cold.” I thought.
I ran toward the patch of trees. I was right. The trees provided warmth
from the wind and snow.
I ducked under a bush that still had green leaves on it. The snow was cold,
but at least it wasn’t blowing in my face anymore.
It took me a while to fall asleep in the bare cold because I was used to
sleeping in warm caves. I yawned and wished that I hadn’t made my mistake.
“Now what will I do?” I asked myself, “I can’t live out here alone.”
But before I could think any further, my eyes shut, and I finally fell asleep.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
•
I woke that morning and the snow had stopped, but I still felt cold. I got up and
shook the snow off my body. Then I realized I was starving. I crept out of the
bushes to search for food and the leaves began to shake.
When I was fully out, I saw a tiny mouse run out of its burrow and onto
the bright snow. It scampered close to me, and I crouched, waiting to pounce on
the tiny, bug-eyed creature. Unfortunately, a big black and blue dragon in the
middle of white snow stands out, and the mouse took one look at me and ran.
“Darn-it!” I screamed as my stomach growled its anger.
By then, I knew that all the prey heard my roar and ran away.
“Well,” I told myself, “I’m not going to get food anytime soon.” Then I
followed the peak of the mountain.
While I trekked, I heard another mouse squeaking as it ran out of its hole.
Once again, I crouched, ready to attack. But my stomach roared, and the mouse
took one look at me and scattered back into its hole.
As I was about to scream in frustration, I noticed a big, dark boulder sitting
on the top of the mountain. Except it turned into a creature as it started
running at me. I was about to run the other way, but the animal stopped, and
it was Skull . . .
“You’ll never get food the way you hunt,” he smirked, “You should have taken
my food when I gave it to you.”
All I could think was that I had to get away from him. “But I can’t,” I
thought, “He took me down once and he can do it again.”
“I can hunt for myself!” I yelled.
“No, you can’t,” he retorted while jumping up on a snow-covered rock,
“You’re not adjusted to this kind of lifestyle. Watch!”
He blew a shock of lighting at the hole where the mouse went. The mouse
came running out, and he quickly swiped it up with one claw and ate it alive.
Then, he licked his blood-covered jaws, and stepped forward at me and growled.
I knew he was about to attack, and I braced for it, but he jolted up in alarm, and
turned his to the wind. Then flew off.
It made me scared to see him like that. He looked scared, as if there were
something else tougher out here. But I pushed on. The wind was picking up
again, and there was no scent of food anywhere. I felt as if my stomach was about
to eat my other organs.
A blizzard picked up again, and I was once again looking for shelter to hide
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in. But the strong winds blew snow so hard in my face that I could only see a
few feet in front of me.
As I kept walking in the freezing snow, I saw a round grey blur in front of me.
“A rock!” I silently babbled.
I ran toward it and noticed that it had a small cave. Thankfully, it was big
enough for me. I hunkered down in the small, dark place and sparked a fire
from some sticks on the ground.
It was difficult to sleep that night because all I could think of was how
Skull said that I would never be able to survive out here if I didn’t adjust to the
mountain lifestyle.
“But, how did he?” I questioned.
I tried to come up with ways to adjust, but nothing came to me. I was so
used to the lifestyle I lived, that I couldn’t think of what Skull did to survive.
The only thing I could think of was the hunting technique that Skull had
showed me. But now that I thought about it, my stomach yelled, making me
think of how I didn’t eat a morsel.
I started to slide back into the cave, but it was so small that my claws
showed, and snow started to blanket on them. However, I managed to sleep
somehow.
When the mists of the morning sun came out, I was relieved, yet hungry. I
managed to survive a night without sleeping, but that meant I had to eat today
or else I wouldn’t see another day.
By now I thought my stomach wanted to leave my body in search of food.
“It would probably have a better chance of finding it,” I sneered to myself.
As I set off, my legs were so tired from last night that I thought they’d at
least break today. All I wanted to do was take a nap, but my stomach refused
me to do so.
As I trudged along, one talon at a time, I finally saw a mouse.
Forgetting everything, I leaped towards it at once. Alas, I missed, and
the mouse scurried back into its hole. I got so aggravated that I rapidly shot
lightning strikes at it.
The mouse came running back out in fear and . . . SMACK!
“I caught it!” I gushed.
As I soothed my hunger pains by eating the mouse, a noise came from a
bush. I ignored it and kept gulping down the mouse.
When I finished, I heard breathing noises behind me. Since I thought it
was Skull, I quickly turned around. However, I cocked my head. It wasn’t Skull.
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Whatever this thing was, I’ve never seen it before, but it didn’t seem like the
friendliest . . . whatever it was.
It was brown, with long ears that pointed at the top. Its teeth were as sharp
as daggered rocks that sat at a bottom of a gorge. The thing had an unusually
long tail and a mouth that opened weirdly.
It started walking towards me, and every step it took, I backed away. If this
thing was anything like Skull I had to run away . . . now!
So, I lifted my wings and flew as fast as I could the other way. When I
glanced over my shoulder, I was shocked. The brown creature was right behind
me! Then, it pounced.
He took me down and once again, I felt the cold earth beneath me.
The creature sliced me across my face and viciously bit me in the neck.
Cold blood flowed fast out of my body. I felt too weak. There was no way
I could beat this creature who had pinned me down.
As he started scratching my face rapidly, adding to the wounds I already
had, I went numb. The cold and blood were too much for me and I forced myself
to conclude that this was the end. . . .
When I took several deep breathes, waiting for my last one, the weight was
lifted. I no longer felt the heavy creature on top of me.
I thought that he left me to die, but then I felt myself being carried. I tried
to look and hear what happened, but my vision was blurred, and my ears rung.
I fainted for the last time. . . .
I woke up to me hitting a floor. Both the ringing and blurred vision vanished,
and I could clearly see the giant purple and black dragon that towered over me.
I was in Skull’s cave once again.
“I told you these places weren’t fit for a kid. That creature was named
Backbone and he is probably the deadliest thing you will ever encounter in your
life. He’s the reason I wear the skull mask.” He paused, thinking, “Now, this is
your last chance I’m going to ask you about how you got banished. Give me as
many details as possible. It will be a matter of life and death.” Skull flexed his
claws at me, lowering his head as if he were challenging me.
I looked up, stared him in the eyes, and cried, “It was Nightmare’s trickery!
I went out with one of my closest friends, Geode. He disappeared for a while in
the dark, so I tried to find him.” I sobbed, “I finally did, but he acted weird. His
eyes were bloodshot, and his skin was revolting. I came closer to him, calling
his name and he attacked me! I attacked back and ended up killing him . . .
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I-I brought him back and tried to explain, but Nightmare twisted my words!
He never liked me, and never treated me like a dragon should! But I swear I
didn’t do anything wrong!” I stood up and looked at Skull. “Everyone in our
tribe believed him, and they attacked me until I left, fleeing to the mountains.”
I fell back down. The wounds on my body were more than I could bare.
Trickled of tears mixed with blood ran from my eyes. I didn’t want to die. . . .
Surprisingly Skull came over and laid next to me. He looked me in my
blood-covered eyes. His eyes were affectionate. Something in them turned. I
was seeing a whole different side to him.
“I actually did shatter all of those eggs in the story, but only because of
Nightmare. After getting banished, I got time to think why he hated me for no
reason. Then I knew it had to be because he was scared. He knew that one day
I would rise and become leader. Every little thing that happened to the tribe
was somehow twisted to make everyone think I did it. That’s when friends,
like Night, turned on me, and aided Nightmare. I killed him, but only because
of the pressure. Then, one day an idea hit me to kill Nightmare’s egg in the
nursery . . . Only problem was, I didn’t know which one was his . . . and killed
them all. . . .” He breathed heavily, “That’s what that backstabbing, deadheaded,
dunce gets!” He turned and looked at me meaningfully, “Stay with me. You’re
better off here than you are anywhere else. Plus, when we are ready we can take
Nightmare by force.”
I looked at him, feeling the same pain he felt, “Sounds like a deal,” I agreed.
After all, he didn’t seem too crazy. . . .
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Cari Molin
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Pikachu Buddy
(Non-Fiction)
When Cassie and Sammie got into a feud, they moved me. Then they moved me
again when they made up and a new kid came. I’m talking to my new roommate,
who wears a Pikachu sweater and speaks with a stutter. She says Pikachu is her
favorite Pokémon.
“He’s a good one,” I say.
She asks, “Do you want to be my Pikachu buddy?”
“Sure,” I say, not knowing what that entails.
Cassie is loud and poorly behaved, and Sammie is rude. My only friend is
Pikachu buddy. She asks the adults to print out coloring pages, and we sit on
the floor coloring them with yellow Crayolas.
When we run out of coloring pages, Pikachu buddy draws pictures of anime
girls with big eyes and dramatic lashes. I draw a rainbow and write song lyrics.
I draw two female symbols together. Pikachu buddy looks at it.
“Nice drawing,” she says. She does not comment on the female symbols.
I go out of our room to get some tape, holding my picture at my side. I hear
some quiet laughs and whispers from the other girls. The staff members are
only allowed to give me a couple pieces of tape at a time, so I put one on each
finger of one hand, hold my picture with the other, and go back to my room.
Cassie isn’t just loud, sometimes she’s scary. I think she likes how worked up
people get when she misbehaves. Sammie comments on my arm bandages like
she thinks they’re funny. The doctors have us keep our doors open for safety.
It’s evening and we’ll have dinner soon. I’m in bed, drifting off. Pikachu buddy
is coloring on the floor.
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I hear the laughing of Sammie and Cassie from the common room over the
scribbling of crayons. I slightly eavesdrop on their conversation, mostly mutters,
until I hear the word homo. I ignore it for a couple seconds, but I hear it again.
They couldn’t be talking about me, I assure myself. They don’t know.
“She’s a lesbian.” I hear, clearly, in Cassie’s voice. I open my eyes, sit up, and
peek out the open door. Cassie and Sammie sit at a table giggling.
“I think they’re talking about me,” I tell Pikachu buddy.
“They’re whores,” she says, not looking up from her drawing.
I approach the open door and ask them to stop talking about me.
“Well, you are a lesbian, right?” Cassie asks.
“What does it matter?” I ask. “Please just leave me alone.”
I slam the door and walk back to my bed. Pikachu buddy looks up. “Whores.”
I hear a pounding. “Lesbian!” Cassie calls. I stand up again and march to
the door. Pikachu buddy follows me.
“Go away,” I groan.
She laughs, a loud, ugly cackle. “Homo!” She calls through the door. “Dyke!”
I scream back. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” My heart jitters and races, and
hot, salty tears flow down my face.
Pikachu buddy puts her arms around me. “Calm down, calm down,” she
whispers.
Cassie bangs the door with her fists. I hear the words homo, lesbian, and
dyke dozens of times, scattered among pounding and loud, sarcastic laughs.
Pikachu buddy pulls me away from the door, where I yell at Cassie for
silence.
“Don’t yell, it’s not worth it,” she begs.
A staff member asks her to stop, and I run to the bathroom. Afterwards,
the staff escort me out of the unit. He locks the door, but I hear a slam after
we walk away. Cassie presses her face up to the glass, along with her left middle
finger, grinning and laughing. She sings loudly, I kissed a girl, and I liked it. The
staff member puts his arm around me and walks me away. I didn’t see Pikachu
buddy again. I never even got her name.
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Chelsianna Havko
Grade 12
Montour High School
A Good Day to Die
(Fiction)
It was an absolutely dreadful day. Thick, gray clouds choked out every ounce of
sunlight until the sky was nothing but a bleak vast mass of gray nothingness.
Heavy raindrops poured down in vengeful waves, soaking the earth to its very
core. Gusts of wind mercilessly buffeted anything that was unfortunate enough
to be stuck in its storm. It was a miserable day for everything alive, but it was
a splendid day for Death. And it was the perfect day for Emelio Ruiz to die.
Emelio’s death wasn’t anything special. It wasn’t tragic or heroic or out of
the ordinary in any way. The eighty-one-year-old had led a good life: grandfather
of four, retiree who had worked for everything he had, lover of late night
fishing and Major League Baseball. He died in his sleep, lacking of any big
theatrics or final hurrah. He laid down to take his midday nap and that was
it, painless, ordinary and unassuming. As he was in life, so was his departure.
Death hurried down to take Emelio home.
Emelio’s soul was waiting for Death when he arrived and went willingly as
most souls do. Death wrapped his capable arms around his newest edition and
was about to carry him off when something gave him pause.
Delicate footsteps made the floorboards behind him creak as slightly as if
it were merely wind shaking the old house. When Death turned to look behind
him, he found a skinny, olive-skinned girl with bright eyes and a sad smile on
her face. She said nothing but walked to Emelio and grabbed his not-quite-cold
hands. She stood there, staring at him for the longest time, her deep brown eyes
filling with tears which then rolled down her face.
“Thank you for everything, Papa,” was all she said. After what felt like
hours, she sank to her knees and tilted her head up to the sky. Their encounter
was brief, but it was enough.
It wasn’t the girl’s appearance that touched Death’s heart. It wasn’t her tears
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either; Death had seen countless tears. It wasn’t even her praying; a being as
impossible and immortal as Death did not need God. No, it was the sheer passion
for life that shone through her eyes. Death had never before seen anyone that
loved life as much as she. Her eyes, her walk, her smile. Everything. Death had
met millions of people who hated life, millions who had given up. But Emelio’s
granddaughter was not like that in any way. Just by looking at her, Death could
tell that she resented everything he stood for, and she would not go with him
easily when the time came. That was why Death was fascinated with her.
His interest in her was nothing but a simple hobby at first. A way to distract
himself from the gloom and doom of the death industry. But days after their
encounter he still couldn’t get her out of his mind. Weeks later, he yearned for
those lively eyes again. He decided he needed to see them at least one more time
before her perfect, shining eyes were gone forever.
So he did what any reasonable being would do. He found Isabel, he mapped
out her daily routine, and he took matters in his own hands. When he arrived
at the bus stop, it was roughly four in the afternoon. Isabel had gotten on at the
previous stop and was sitting toward the front, staring out the window, when
the bus slowed to a halt to pick up more passengers.
Death knew he didn’t have much time. He wanted to do this safely and
efficiently. He didn’t want any more people getting hurt than absolutely necessary.
So as soon as the wheels stopped moving, he glided up the steps and
wrapped his cold, deadly hands—the same hands he used to put dying men out
of their misery—around the throat of Isabel’s bus driver. In less than 10 seconds
the middle-aged woman was as dead as a wooden post. Death yanked the lever
from drive to park and watched the scene unfold. At first, the passengers were
annoyed: they had places to be and the incompetent bus driver was too slow.
Then they were panicked: she wasn’t moving at all. Someone called the police.
In the half hour the passengers were stuck in the bus, Death watched Isabel
expectedly. She was as calm and as passionate as before. She was even more
beautiful with the sunlight shining through the windows onto her soft skin.
Even now, for this woman she barely knew, Isabel prayed. She did everything just
right, just how Death had hoped she would. But . . . but there was something
missing. Her eyes were as lively and passionate as ever, but they were missing
something. The one thing that put Death over the edge. Sorrow.
That put him out a little. He still got a rush seeing her, but it wasn’t the
same high. The sorrow had intensified those eyes a million times. Once he saw
the real thing, this felt like an imposter, a cheap off-brand.
Death tried to go without her for a while, but discovered that was harder
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
than he could have ever thought. He needed those eyes as much as living beings
needed water. He began to suffer from withdrawal.
A month after the bus driver incident, Death arrived at Isabel’s house. This
did not go exactly how Death had planned. When he arrived at Isabel’s front
door, she was playing fetch with her family dog, Gus, in the yard. Death was
impatient. He had places to be and souls to reap. He thought about leaving them
and coming back later, but the sight of Isabel drove him into a frenzy. “I’ll just
have to improvise,” Death thought.
While the German shepherd was mid jump, Death appeared at his side,
quick as a flash and knocked him on the head. Isabel stared in horror as Gus
dropped like a rock and didn’t get back up.
“Gus? What’s wrong, baby?” She approached him quickly, sprinting to his
side very differently than she had with her dead grandfather.
She tried shaking him. She tried brushing his face with her shaking fingertips.
She tried calling for help, but no one came. Death had wrapped a little
bubble around them so he could watch her sorrow in peace. She tried to pick her
dog up, presumably to take him inside, but Death stopped that too. A hundred
pounds of air weighed Gus down to the ground.
Not knowing what to else to do, Isabel glanced around helplessly and broke
into sobs. Death was immediately satisfied. He smiled down at her for minutes
and watched her beautiful eyes fill again and again with tears. He wanted to
touch her, squeeze her, and kiss all those tears away. He had never experienced
any like this before. As abruptly as he had come, Death flew off away from the
dead dog and the sobbing girl. For the first time in his existence, Death was
afraid.
The girl had too much power over him. And the worst part was she didn’t
even know. She couldn’t know.
Death distanced himself. There was no time to waste on silly mortals. He
had souls to collect all over the world. Every week, he saw millions of women,
dead and alive. He searched the face of every tear-stricken woman he encountered,
hoping to find a new set of eyes on which to focus. Nothing worked. He
took a business trip to every continent and every country around the world. He
saw women with nicer bodies and bigger cars and better clothes. But nobody
compared to Isabel.
In a fury, Death flew to her house. He stood outside her bedroom window
and watched her sleep. As hard as he tried, Death could not figure out why he
was acting this way. He was immortal, almighty, a god in his own right for
hell’s sake. Why was he letting this woman control him?
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He was furious and lustful and impassioned. For Death, that was a very
bad thing to be. He considered killing Isabel right then and there for all the
troubles she had caused him. It would be easy, a mere touch of his hands or slip
of his scythe. But no sooner had the thought surfaced in his mind than she
stirred awake. Her eyes blinked lazily in the dark for a few seconds, fighting off
the intoxication of sleep. Suddenly her eyes flew wide open and Death could
have sworn she stared right at him. They locked eyes for almost a minute before
Isabel turned over abruptly and fell back asleep. It was brief and dark, but it was
enough. Death was under her spell once more.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t still angry. In fact, if anything he was even more
outraged than before. He sat there for hours, ignoring the thousands of dying
souls that begged him to take them away, and watched her. The stupid, reckless
mortal who cared too much and stole every rational thought from his mind.
Right before the first rays of morning broke through the cloudy night,
Death slipped downstairs through the kitchen and into Isabel’s fourteen-yearold
brother’s room. Death was almost sad, knowing that the poor boy didn’t
deserve what was about to happen to him. But that was a sacrifice Death was
willing to make. Before the boy awoke, Death ran his fingers over the teen’s
alarm clock. When Sebastian hit the snooze button minutes later, a small electrical
shock ran through his body. He would never wake up again.
Isabel knocked on Sebastian’s door at exactly 5:50am to make sure he was
awake for school. When he didn’t answer, she pounded on the door and shouted
his name. Silence filled the dark house.
She quickly became annoyed. “It’s too early in the morning for this garbage,”
she cursed, “Sebastian, open this door.”
Isabel’s tears after finding her brother’s dead body stiff and spread out over
the bed was the most beautiful thing Death had ever seen. He couldn’t control
his glee as he left her there, sobbing and wailing at the police on the other end
of the phone. It was the happiest Death had ever been in his entire existence.
But as we all know, happiness does not last.
It happened by chance one morning while Death was in Paris. He had just
gathered up the soul of some minor league superstar who overdosed on Botox
and red wine when he saw Isabel’s parents. Although they were on vacation,
their faces were ugly with stress and exhaustion. Mrs. Ruiz’s eyes were puffy
and swollen and her husband’s face was all dark shadows and drooping bags.
“Some people are so sensitive when you kill everyone they love,” Death thought.
As soon as they got on the airplane to go home, Death made the merciful
decision to end her parent’s suffering. Right when they reached peak altitude,
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
the gas inside the plane mysteriously exploded. The plane plummeted down
in a mess of melted metal and flames. None of the passengers survived. Death
proudly collected the souls before going to check in on the girl who made his
heart ache.
When he finally got to her house, he found Isabel in a fit of madness. She
had already ripped the curtains off the windows, smashed every last dish in the
kitchen, and set fire to the furniture in the living room. Death was amazed by
her frantic movements. She was so passionate even now, when absolute madness
had her by the throat, that he couldn’t help but love her. Yes, even now with
bruises all over her body and tears oozing out of her eyes she was the most
beautiful thing he had ever seen. And Death wanted her.
The thing Death didn’t quite comprehend about humans is that they are, as
a general rule, unpredictable and irrational. Before Isabel, Death was the most
rational and indifferent being in the universe. Despite the millenniums he spent
with them, Death never came to understand human emotions. Yes, he knew
that killing her entire family would destroy her, but Death never intended for
Isabel to make an attempt on her own life.
When her soul woke up nestled safely in his arms, the first thing Isabel
did was slap Death in the face. The second thing she did was kick him until
he put her down.
“Wow, the Christians got it wrong. Nothing they wrote about Satan even
comes close to the disgusting, maggoty, rotting piece of filth I see before me.
And yet here you are.”
He smiled. She would come around.
Isabel had never hated anything more than she hated this . . . thing. It was
grinning down at her like some sadistic little boy with a newborn kitten. “Why
did you kill them? Why did you murder every single person I ever loved?”
At least she had kept her eyes. Her passionate, beautiful eyes. “Death doesn’t
discriminate, sweetheart. But I’ll make an exception for you.”
No matter how hard Isabel wailed, Death carried her home.
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Destiny Perkins
Grade 11
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Short Prose
Lineage
(Non-Fiction)
But it is Columbian men that my mother and aunties knew best.
In our kitchen, they are the guiltiest.
—A Cup of Water Under My Bed, Daisy Hernandez
“I don’t care who you bring home, as long as he treats you right,” My mother
declares as she breaks out of glassy eyed trance. We are in the middle of another
conversation, unrelated to love or filial piety. I’d been in the middle of stating
my own opinion, idly browsing my phone and pretending to ignore her blank
stare at an empty wall. My statements dissolve into an irrelevant blurbs as I try
desperately to fill the awkward silence between us.
“I know.” She’s said this all too often, stopped mid-sentence and retreated
deeper into herself to retrieve this one message, Find love wherever you may find it.
“I mean it. I don’t care if he’s ugly or black or white or purple,” Her long
calloused hands are resting on my arm now, a tender reassurance, “Just love him.”
Her trances have been on a repetitive cycle ever since I’ve hit puberty. As
my hips began to bloom and expand and my bosom began to bloom, I could
feel my mother watching the curved silhouette of womanhood with sadness. A
much different kind of sadness than the sadness you feel when you see someone
in your heart changing, morphing into someone who is doomed to only drift
away from you. No, she absorbed my transforming shape, her dark doe eyes were
steadily flooded with pity and guilt.
“You’re beginning to look a lot like your mama,” my mother snakes behind
me as I’m caught in the mirror, fixing myself for school. I am 13, a mouthful of
braces and fragile skin pulled taught over a body I think is too big. Her arm is
draped over my shoulder, she is leaning on me more for support than comfort.
She looks at the two of us with an expression I can only assume is meant to be of
pride but she looks on the verge of tears—apologetic. My mother has a naturally
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sad face. Her eyes are large and droopy, as if her lids are constantly filled to the
brim with tears. Her features are narrow, deer like, her lips a constant hesitant
line. She is worn, beaten with age and memories that refuse to settle with the
dust of time. She hangs off of my young round body like a dying branch.
“I was beautiful when I was in high school,” she continues when I fail to
respond, “I had a beautiful shape . . . men loved me.” She looks at my own
shape and frowns, apologetically. I wonder if maybe she, too, lies awake at
night pondering the ratios, the possibilities, the odds that someone could love
someone like me.
When I speak of romance, when I refer to love, it’s never a personal affair.
In truth, romance for me has become a family ordeal—an enormous tug of
war with myself caught in the middle. My mother’s side of the family hardly
associates with us. My mother’s own mother earned us the generational curse
of banishment. We are doomed to start over, to create our own alienated branch
of the ‘Casey-Riley’ clan and absorb whatever lineage we can muster. We are
nomads. My father’s side of the family has been lost to the tragic process of
immigration, integration, and adoption. My father’s biological family consists
solely of his mother, who now sits in a mental institution a few blocks from his
own home, spewing pleads for her only son in a language no one will understand.
Currently, my family tree is only two generations long. My relatives are
distant memories, my origins are being rewritten. Who I choose to marry or
lie with will rewrite the history of my clan. When I bring up the prospects of a
crush or interest, my mother peers at me with big doe eyes over the rim of her
glasses, expectantly. She will ask for pictures. She will ask for names, numbers,
heritage. She will stay up at night pacing, the carpet muffling her thoughtful
steps as she mumbles her calculations. If he passes these tests, she will retreat
into her closet and pray for him, for us. She will pray that our children are
attractive, healthy, and prosperous. She will wait for God for final approval.
If she doesn’t approve or if no butterfly wings appear pressed to the kitchen
window, she will veer me away with a series of strategic clicking of her tongue.
If I were to love someone who could not bear me a good life or at least
children, there is a nagging fear that we will be eagerly omitted from memory.
Who will love us? Who will remember us? For this, my mother looks at my
form and apologizes.
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Evie Jin
Grade 11
Winchester Thurston School
Short Prose
The Keeper
(Fiction)
Day 978
In nine hundred and seventy-seven days, six hundred have been golden ones,
days outlined in sunshine and brushstrokes of bright blue, but today, the sky is
grey, painted over with thick swirls of clouds. The sea is a metallic sheet, and
the wind shrieks across the distant hills, high and lonely. The few trees on the
island bow to its rage.
Beside me, my closest companion shelters me from the gale, an arm wrapped
around my shoulders. Here, I feel protected and safe, unreachable by the wild
might of nature and just a bit more loved. From our strikingly similar positions—both
rooted powerlessly to the island, both constantly fighting nature’s
fury—it is no wonder that we have become friends. Together, we inspect the
bleak scene laid out before us.
“Will a ship come by today?” I ask.
The tree makes no reply, but seems to nod ever so slightly, and a thrill of
anticipation rises up inside me. Perhaps, finally, the lighthouse will fulfill its
purpose.
It is built at the northernmost tip of the island, which itself is simply a heap
of rocks rising out of the frothing sea, all rugged cliffs and wind-stunted trees.
Its size is well suited to its population; it takes only eight minutes to walk from
one end to the other and back.
Apparently, this island also has a reputation of driving its inhabitants insane;
indeed, I have been informed that the previous keeper of the light lasted barely
a year before throwing himself off the cliffs. And the one before him—well, the
tallest tree on the island still bears a tightly knotted coil of rope.
It is the loneliness that makes them mad, people say—the seclusion that
begins with dejection and heartache and eventually manifests into voices in your
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head, sounds when no one is there, mysterious shadows that crawl across the
walls at night. Fortunately, I have not yet experienced any of these terrors, so I
imagine that I must still be decently sane.
The sun sets early in autumn, and when night begins to spill across the
sky, scattering a fine sprinkling of stars, I climb the set of two hundred closely
spiraling steps to the lantern room at the top of the lighthouse. The large lamp
in the center lies still and dormant, presiding like a king over the glass-enclosed
chamber. At the moment, it slumbers in shadow, but after it is lit, the flame will
slice open the night, straight to the horizon twenty miles away. Two and a half
gallons of whale oil scaled the steps with me; the lamp will devour it all by dawn.
I busy myself with the lamp, performing the movements meticulously, as it
is the one thing in the world which I am able to do well. I take particular care
with the massive glass lenses that surround the lamp, wiping them down with
a soft cloth until a face that resembles my own peers out at me, shifting back
and forth in its transparent cage; except this face—with its unfamiliar, sunken
cheeks and hollow eyes that seem to gaze at nothing—cannot possibly be mine.
I light the lamp with a flourish and step back. And instantly, the sea is
illuminated; the light cuts a path of flame through the darkness, and as it
rotates, it sets the island and the surrounding ocean ablaze. It will burn steadily
through the night and into the morning, watching over the seas like a single,
lost and lonely eye, waiting for something to fill the blackness, for any reason
to go on shining.
It is a solitary life, this. An empty, forlorn, hollow sort of life, always
searching, always waiting—for something that may never come.
Several hours later and well into the night, I find myself staring into shadowy
oblivion with watering eyes, unable to sleep. The ocean sighs in my ears,
and the tide flings itself ceaselessly against the rocks. Salt spray stings my skin,
slapping me with tiny hands. At the moment, this small pain is the only thing
that keeps me grounded to this world; without it, I would already be floating
away.
Then, at the very edge of the lighthouse’s glowing beam, a shape disturbs
the stillness. I squint, trying to decipher it, but the light has already turned
away. It takes an agonizing seven heartbeats for it to spin around again, but at
last, I am able to make out a looming mast . . . three white sails . . . a great,
curving prow.
The ship slices the dark water in half as it glides, all shadow and fog, toward
the island.
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Day 979
For the past several weeks, I have been waking earlier and earlier, and every
time, I feel slightly unsettled, as though I am late for something or have some
obligation which I have left unfulfilled. At the moment, it is just before dawn,
and so the sky still slumbers, blanketed in deep, silken blue. Even so, the bed
creaks under my fidgeting, and some inexplicable ache tears a yawning hole in
my chest—so sharp I nearly gasp. I find it necessary to bite down hard on my
tongue before the tears come.
Later, when the morning is crystal-bright and sneeringly cold, I make my
way outdoors. The pain has subsided somewhat now that it is daytime, and I
venture a peek over the side of the cliffs. The sun’s rays are as sharp as jagged
glass; I feel them jabbing into my eyes.
The ship has somehow found a place to drop anchor and is bobbing on the
surface of the water, sails billowing. Far above them, atop a wide ledge of crumbling
brown rock, I observe the few men who have come ashore, picking their
way across the pillowy sand. My heart leaps, whether from joy or fear, I cannot
tell. Briefly, I consider venturing down to see if my assistance is required—few
mariners ever attempt to dock at this island, as it is surrounded almost entirely
by razor-edged shards of rock and is altogether a treacherous place to moor.
Then I laugh to myself, shaking my head, and turn away.
I step forward until I stand at the tip of the ledge, balanced precariously
between stability and falling, letting the wind hold me. On this side, the rock
plunges down steeply under my feet, driving itself through a thousand feet of
air and into the shimmering blue waves below. For a moment, I imagine how
it would feel to simply step over the side and let myself fall, down, down, until
I sink like a stone in the sea.
“You would not jump, would you?”
I start, stumbling in my surprise, and just manage to catch myself. One of
the sailors is standing at the end of the twisting, narrow path that leads down
to the water, watching me silently. I had not heard his approach. I smile and
reluctantly step away from the edge.
“Certainly not,” I assure him. “I was only admiring the view.”
His eyes rove over my face, as if he were trying to assess the validity of my
statement. He is young, with a mess of windblown hair as golden as the sand
and a loose white shirt flapping against him in the breeze. Both are damp with
sweat, possibly from his strenuous climb up the cliffs. He has the blithe, carefree
look of a boy without troubles, a boy who has never experienced pain or shame.
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After several moments, he moves to stand beside me. “So you are the
lighthouse keeper.”
“I am.”
“How long have you been on the island?”
“Years and years,” I say, “years and years.”
“I imagine it must be lonely,” he observes, gazing across the sharp angles
and broken edges of my barren isle, and then farther out, to where the ice-cold
sea fuses with the sky, locked together in a silent, furious battle of wills, each
convinced of its own strength, each determined not to yield.
“Every day,” I answer, and a hollow mournfulness seeps into my chest,
weighing me down as a storm does a cloud. “I watch the gulls swoop and dive
across the sky, hearts as light as their bodies, calling to each other. I watch the
dolphins leaping out of the water, wild and free. I watch the ships come and go,
borne with the wind and the tide into distant futures. And still, I am chained
to this island, all alone, with nowhere to go and no reason to stay.”
“You will be home someday, surely?”
“No,” I reply, “never.” In truth, I had no desire to return to my hometown,
where I could boast of no achievements to my name, where my sole occupation
was to labor through the night emptying reeking cesspools of human waste, as
I had no other skills with which to make a living. There had been no direction
to my existence, no purpose. When I heard of an opening for the position of
lighthouse keeper on some distant island, I leaped upon it, hoping that a new
career would ease the painful throb of uselessness in my heart.
Unfortunately, I was mistaken. I had been unprepared for the enormous
difficulty of being the sole inhabitant of the island, and over time, I grew to envy
the ships that came and went, ships with ambition and destination. I began to
wish every day that I had done more, accomplished more, been more. I wished I
had put myself to better use. But now, I supposed it was too late.
“Sometimes,” I confess, “I wish I could dash myself upon those rocks there
and be done with it.”
“Ah, but we need you,” he says earnestly. “You are the light at the end of
the tunnel. You are the candle burning in the window at night, guiding a lonely
traveler home.”
“But where is my light?” I ask. “Who will lead me? I spend my life guiding
others, and yet I feel so lost.”
“Have you a wife? A family?”
“My wife slipped away some years ago under cover of night, discontented
with our dismal living conditions and sheer lack of better prospects. I have no
other family.”
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“I am sorry to hear that,” the sailor says, and indeed, he looks grieved.
Two thin lines have etched themselves upon his forehead, and his eyebrows are
furrowed. “But is it not rewarding to think of the lives you have saved with your
light, or the countless others whom you may keep from smashing themselves
against these rocks? Truly, sir, I would say that yours is a life of purpose.”
At this point, I desired to change the subject and hastened to turn the
focus upon my companion. “Tell me, young man,” I suggest, “about your life
on the seas.”
“Ah, sir, it is as fickle as the weather, as unpredictable as the waves.” He
laughs a little, rubbing the back of his neck. “I spend my days on the water,
making friends with the sun and the stars. Some days I go with the tide; some
against. I take each day as it comes. I sail where the wind takes me.”
“Surely it is difficult to live such a life,” I remark, “forever at the mercy of
the wind and the waves.”
“Aye, sir,” he agrees, and proceeds to regale me with tales of his adventures
on the high seas—of the ever-present danger of attack from enemy ships; the
constant fear of drowning; the unrelenting dampness and the cold and the
rats, which would chew remorselessly through books and clothing and, on
occasion, bite a sailor who had been unlucky enough to cross it. He tells of
the diseases that abound on board the boat; the scurvy and the pneumonia;
the dry, wheezing coughs of sailors who had developed lung problems from
breathing the mildewy air below decks. The deaths are the worst he says—
some are throes of furious, bleeding rage; others are simply a silent fading
of breath and a final sigh, but either way, the others must grit their teeth,
choke down regret, and fling the body overboard into the wild, ravenous waves.
“Then what do you live for?” I find myself asking when he had finished. I must
confess I am somewhat shaken by his stories; my hands are trembling and my
eyes, surprisingly, are damp. For I, more so than any other, am familiar with
pain—it is an old friend of mine, and to witness another struggling under its
burden is near unbearable. I continue, “What could possibly be worth this
hardship?”
He tilts his head back, closes his eyes. He lets the gentle breeze kiss his
face and the sun’s golden fingers caress his skin. “I live for the sea. I live for
the sky. I live for the thrilling fear of knowing I may die each day, and the
undeniable joy of watching another sunrise.” There is a carelessness in his
words, a lightheartedness of expression that only the truly free can know and
embody. Before me is a man with no worries overhanging him, no cumbersome
or mundane burdens to crush him under their weight. He is as free as the birds,
the dolphins, the moon and the rain and the stars. And still he talks, letting the
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words rush in an unhindered current past his tongue. “Once, I was a scholar. I
received an excellent education and had many prospects for the future. And yet,
I was miserable, choked with responsibility and strangled by obligation. The
day I left that life was the most joyful one I remember.” He smiles. “Certainly,
conditions on board the ship are unpleasant at times, but I cannot deny that I
relish my present calling. The sky is my heart; the sea is my blood; the wind is
my soul. I have always loved these things, and now I live for them, for what is
a life without happiness?”
To this, I have no reply, and for several moments, the sailor and I simply
stand and let the colors of the sunset soak into our skin.
Some time later, he tells me he must go. Before departing, he
turns to me and lays a hand on my arm. “Well”—he clears his throat—
“you’ll find your way someday. I know it. ” He salutes smartly before
striding back toward the cliffs, beginning his endless descent down.
Long after he is gone, I still remain on the ledge, struggling to understand his
words as the flaming colors of a bleeding sun drain from the sky, and velvet
dusk seeps in to take their place. I make no move toward the lantern at the
top of the lighthouse; I simply stay where I am and let my heart crumble and
collapse until I am only a shadow, until it is too dark to see and my eyes water
from the strain of trying.
The seas are black tonight, starless.
XXXX
I have stopped counting the days. They hold no consequence for me anymore.
The ship is leaving, and the sky sags with despair. The clouds hang thick
and low over the simmering sea. They are angry with each other, preparing for
battle.
The final sail rises, and the ship begins to pull away. I watch it go—another
vessel of dreams drifting off into some faraway world while I remain behind,
sucking the bones of the past until they have all but lost their meaning.
Then, unexpectedly, I am rushing down the craggy cliffs and toward the
thin strip of sand that borders the water, seemingly possessed by a wild, maniacal
energy. I do not know why I shove my way heedlessly through shrubs and bushes,
ignoring the pain as they claw at me, or what drives me to slip and stumble
down the steep slope as though the hounds of hell were at my heels. All I know
is that I want the ship to stay—that I don’t want it to go—that I cannot bear
to be abandoned again.
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I plunge like a bullet into the sand, waving my arms and shouting with all
the strength I can muster. But it is no use, no use—the ship is sailing away,
growing small against the vast, arching sky, the ceiling of the world. I shout
until my throat is ragged and hoarse, until I lose sight of whether I am shouting
for the ship or simply raging against myself, my mistakes, my hateful, wretched
inability to truly live. And still I can hear the sailor’s voice murmuring softly in
my ear and imagine the world he painted with his words, a world in which the
birds sing and the sun laughs and the earth is beautiful.
I imagine his golden hair, the curve of his smile. I saw the ocean in his eyes.
I stand there watching as the ship moves farther and farther away, a tiny
speck lost in the infinite, rippling blue, white sails waving a last goodbye—and
then it’s gone.
Above me, the sky begins to cry. The water churns, thrashing and foaming
with fury.
My head throbs with the memory of him, alive and laughing before me.
My heart swells with emotion, raw and unbearably real.
The sky is my heart.
The sea is my blood.
The wind is my soul.
“For what is a life,” I murmur, “without freedom?”
I bow my head, and I give myself to the sea.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Evie Jin
Grade 11
Winchester Thurston School
After the Show
(Fiction)
The comedy club was an easy sight to miss. Small and dilapidated, tucked
away between two buildings of much higher stature, it was a place that even
the loneliest of vagabonds found difficult to discover. The inside was worse,
if anything—dim and gloomy, perpetually filled with the lingering smells of
cigarette smoke and cheap booze. Pictures clung desperately to the walls, and
footprints lay immortalized on floors no one bothered to sweep. And yet, in the
evenings, the room became a haven of sorts—a place where joy reigned superior
and everyday worries were briefly forgotten, where rascals and rogues could share
a laugh with kings and forget the distance between them.
This was the comedian’s kingdom, and the stage was his throne.
When Josiah Middleton took his place on the low platform of sagging wood,
barely above the floor, he was a king. All eyes were drawn to him; all ears were
held in rapt attention. On the nights he performed, on those nights only, people
listened to him. They cared what he had to say. One by one, they fell under the
spell of the club, ensnared by inexplicable allure—of late-night drinking, the
musky sweet scent of cigars, the lull of his voice spinning comedy out of thin
air—and they were his.
On that night, he had just finished telling a particularly riveting tale involving
a hammer, a lizard, and his high school girlfriend, and the audience was
roaring its appreciation. The men banged their heads on the table and the
women wiped their eyes. The spirit in the club was like champagne bubbles,
fizzy and light, and Josiah was smiling in a way he so rarely did anymore.
He took a sweeping, elaborate bow, ornamented with much twirling of
his hands. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, lords and ladies, keepers and
wanderers, seekers of the light, thank you very much.”
He glanced up toward the clock in the corner. Most people would be asleep
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y now, tucked up in various corners of the city with their dust and their broken
dreams, but for Josiah, the night was just winding down.
Pausing to take a sip of water, he sighed. Several strands of dark hair had
come free of the carefully gelled style he had forced into shape earlier and now
hung, lank and greasy, in front of his face; he smoothed them back with a
trembling hand and turned his attention once more to his audience.
He always gave advice after every show—after the mirth had died down,
the comedy finished. He was familiar with that mysterious quality of laughter
that draws people together, friends and strangers alike, and by the end of the
night, he always felt closer to his audience than before. Several of them were
regulars, and he had memorized their faces; they brought him comfort on the
nights when he felt that there was no point to what he was doing, that everyone
was only there for cheap entertainment, that it wasn’t about him. Others came
for help, he could tell, for a laugh when nothing else could comfort them. He
knew their faces, too, crowding the edges and corners of the room: the downcast
eyes, the occasional slight upturn of the lips, and it was at these lonely hearts
that his advice was primarily directed.
“Don’t get lost out there,” he’d say sometimes, as his audience gathered
gloves and bags and coats soaked through with cigarette smoke and prepared to
step out into the chilly darkness of 1 a.m., a darkness harsh as steel and studded
with hard, glittering stars. “Enjoy the rest of your night—or morning, that is.
Don’t stay up too late.”
That night, he spoke of something he had been thinking about for some
time. Several weeks prior, a man with the build of a bulldog and a face to match
had approached Josiah after his show and crossed his arms, sneering slightly.
“Could you, maybe, tell something good next time?”
“Excuse me?” Josiah had asked, blinking. Surprise and hurt accompany
each other like lightning and thunder, and indignation hadn’t yet struck him.
The other man shrugged, lifting his hands as if in resignation. “Look, man,
I’m just telling it from my perspective. I used to come to every one of your shows,
didja know that?” He paused to take in Josiah’s expression: eyebrows drawn tight
and confused, mouth hanging half-open in speechless shock. “You used to be
good, I’ll give you that. And now you’re just . . . kind of sad. Pathetic, really.”
“I’m very sorry you didn’t enjoy the performance,” Josiah said, grinding his
teeth to dust. “I’m going through a bit of trouble right now. Kind of hard to
stay on top of things, but I’m trying.”
The other man’s expression didn’t flicker. “I didn’t pay to hear your
problems.”
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His eyes slithered down Josiah’s person and back up again. He turned on
his heel and strode toward the exit. “Better shape up or you’ll find yourself with
an empty club,” he barked over his shoulder. “Remember—you’re a comedian.
So start acting like one.”
Weeks later, remembering these words, Josiah still felt his chest ache. His
breath drained from him in a weary sigh. Had he changed, had he truly deteriorated
that much?
Before him, the audience waited. He gripped the microphone and began
to speak.
“Reality’s a slippery thing,” he began. “So easy to forget. Like right now—
we’re all happy here together. But sooner or later, we’ll have to go back out there.
We’ll have to walk the streets alone.” He paused, swallowed. “Because we’re all
alone, every one of us—one way or another, yeah? It’s a great, big world out
there, and sometimes, it feels like there’s no one there to help you out of the
maze. When that happens, you’ve got to help yourself. Slow down. Breathe a
little. Take some time to laugh. Remember, humor is your light. Keep laughing
and you’ll never get lost.”
“Hear, hear,” someone said from the audience, and Josiah felt his spirits rise.
He straightened his spine and kept going.
“But don’t forget about the special people in your life, either. They’re not
gonna be there forever, and neither are you. Hold on to your loved ones . . . hold
on to them. Give ‘em a kiss every once in a while. Maybe you don’t see them
every day, or maybe you’ve screwed up so badly that—” He stopped suddenly,
chewing his lip. Every eye in the audience was fixed on him. When he spoke
onstage, he almost never heard the sound of his own breathing or the slight
whimper from the floorboards when he shifted his weight, but he heard them
now, every sound.
He cleared his throat. The noise came crashing down in the silent room.
He raised the microphone to his lips one final time and said, “They’re valuable,
those people, more than you probably think. So tonight, tell them you love
them, yeah? It’s all we have to give.”
He lowered the microphone, finished. A burst of applause startled him,
followed by a chorus of “amen’s” and “you got it, man’s.” One man stood and
whistled, long and shrill, through his fingers.
Standing there, watching the audience, Josiah felt a slow sense of peace seep
through him. He bowed once more, slowly, lingeringly. The show was over. His
audience reached out for bags, for coats, for each other.
“Stay safe. See you. God bless,” he said over and over again as the audience
began to leave. Some reached up to him before departing, and he clasped their
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hands briefly, drawing some small comfort from the feel of their fingers. He
wondered what they saw in his eyes.
The last audience members walked out the door. Josiah stood for a moment
longer, staring after their retreating backs. He felt hollow again, almost as if the
audience had taken his joy with them.
He patted his pockets and found them empty. Releasing a growl of frustration,
he shouted, “Javier!”
A hulking figure seeped in to fill the doorway: Javier, the club’s bouncer,
a slightly heavyset young man just a stone’s throw above six feet with a head
of spiky dark hair and a thick Spanish accent. He leaned against the doorway,
regarding Josiah with lifted eyebrows. “You called?” he asked mildly.
Almost unconsciously, Josiah took a step back. Javier was intimidating
enough in the best of times, but standing that close to him, Josiah became
even more aware of the five inches the bouncer had on him and the strength
of his arms and build compared to his own soft, rather flabby frame. He felt a
sudden rush of anger at himself, not only for being cowed so easily, but also for
letting himself become so weak, deteriorate so much from what he used to be.
“Gimme a smoke, yeah?” he muttered, already ashamed of speaking so
sharply.
Javier held out a half-empty package of neat, orange-tipped rolls. Josiah
took two and shoved one behind his ear, putting the other in his mouth. “I’ll
be outside,” he told the bouncer. “If I’m not back by sunup, by all means, come
out and get me. I just might be dead.” He turned and left before Javier could
reply. It was a weak attempt at humor, he knew, but he couldn’t seem to stop
joking about his own death, as if doing so would make it seem less real—less
like something that was constantly hunting him. This way, all the times it had
almost conquered him were painted instead as foolish accidents—nothing more.
The first time, he’d tried to hang himself, but ended up falling through
the noose (he hadn’t tied it tightly enough, possibly on purpose). Afterwards,
he hadn’t been able to muster the energy to get up off the floor, and so he had
remained sprawled there instead, staring up at a ceiling that was as blank as
he felt inside.
Another time (he’d lost count by this point), he had slipped out of the house
into the cold, scathing hours of early morning to jump off a bridge. He’d been
planning it for weeks, and it was the perfect time and place to die—few cars,
even fewer people, nobody around to care. He slipped easily through the slats
of the bridge and steadied himself on the narrow lip of metal jutting out over
empty air, preparing for the fall.
Then he looked down at the water, wild and thrashing below him, and he
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was frozen. He stood there for hours, hanging off the side of the bridge, eyes
stinging from the wind—or maybe it was tears. He memorized every angle of
the bridge, every rivet, the feel of the steely metal biting into his palms and
the way the water looked beneath it, churning and angry. He walked home at
dawn, legs shaking, while the streetlights closed their eyes in shame and the
fading stars laughed at him from above. He’d gone straight to bed and stayed
there for a week, crippled with pneumonia, wishing that it would kill him, that
the blankets would show him some small mercy and smother him in his sleep.
He nearly chuckled as he stepped out into the cool night and leaned against
the back wall of the club, rummaging in his pockets for his lighter. The parking
lot stretched wide and lonely in front of him, deserted. He stared out into space,
not looking at anything in particular.
Then a streetlight, almost as if sensing his gaze, flickered and went out,
and this time he did laugh. Can’t even kill myself right, he thought, too scared to
face the pain. Worthless coward.
His cigarette burst to life behind his cupped hand, a small flame tentatively
tasting the darkness. He sagged back against the wall, sucked the sweet smoke
deep into his lungs, and tilted back his head. Pale clouds rose from his open lips,
curling and twisting in the night air. The bricks felt cool and rough through
his shirt. He began to relax—spine curving forward, shoulders sloping down.
The elation he had felt during the show had all but evaporated, and now
that he was alone, he could feel himself retreating, curling up and away, back to
the dark space inside his head where he spent his nights trapped and alone. The
bad place, he called it, and when he locked himself in, nobody could coax him
out. His friends had tried, his children had done their best, and his wife had
struggled more than any of them, endlessly coaxing and pleading and crying in
turn, but nothing had helped.
She was gone now, his wife. She’d had enough. “I’m married to a madman,”
she’d said, right before she had packed a suitcase, taken the kids by the hand,
and simply walked out of the house and away from the meager living they had
scraped together. He hadn’t seen her since.
Josiah reached up and dabbed at the corners of his eyes. His fingers came
away wet.
He realized, with a sudden fresh wave of pain, that only his oldest would
remember him; to the younger ones, he would be a stranger. He tried to console
himself, telling himself that he likely wouldn’t remember them either, but his
heart only twisted again.
Then he saw the man, and the cigarette fell out of his mouth.
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He had been appearing after every show for at least a month, crouched in
the dark space between two streetlights on the opposite side of the parking lot,
leering from the shadows. Never any closer. Sometimes, he’d have a cigarette,
visible only by the dusty-red tip that burned, fiery and glowing, against a mess
of congealed darkness, releasing blooms of smoke that rose and drifted away
like dandelion seeds, like hope.
That night, his hands were empty, resting on his knees. Josiah could see the
dark smear of unshaven scruff on the man’s chin; the frayed strands of dirty hair
framing a face alive with malice; and below that, a tattered coat of dark tweed,
patched and stained. A homeless man, an asylum patient, a prison escapee—he
could have been any of them.
He stared at Josiah, who stared defiantly back. Neither looked away.
“Scram,” Josiah tried.
The man didn’t move. He was calm—relaxed, even, while Josiah clenched
tighter and tighter, almost shaking from the strain.
“Fine,” he said. “Stare all you want. You’re not getting anything.”
He turned his back to the man and lit his second cigarette, trying not
to think of the silent figure crouched behind him across the parking lot, still
waiting—for what? Then a horrible thought occurred to him, and he fumbled
with the lighter, nearly scorching himself.
My God, Josiah thought, is that what I’ll look like in five, ten, fifteen years?
Shabby and broken, rotting half to death? Me?
The thought chilled him, and he shivered, though there was no breeze. He
realized that if he kept living the way he did, dejected and alone, he may end
up exactly like the man behind him: destitute, directionless, sitting in parking
lots at two in the morning, preying on the hopes and successes of younger men
that he could never hope to relive.
He tried to picture his family, their faces. Come back, he wanted to say. I’ve
changed. But deep inside, he knew that he hadn’t. He was still the same.
He knew, also, that she wouldn’t come back. Not to him. There was nothing
left for him except this, here, now, the tears shed in silence and the whimpers
of pain muffled by the dark, and he felt himself turning once more to gaze at
what he was sure would be his future.
The man sat with his head leaned against one hand, fingers spread across
his temple. As Josiah watched, the hand began to move, slowly, slowly, two
fingers pulling back, thumb angling forward until his hand formed a gun,
digging into the pale skin at the base of his forehead. A challenge. The man
raised his eyebrows.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
“I’m not afraid of you,” Josiah said out loud.
The man’s teeth flashed white in the gloom. He was grinning, Josiah realized,
an eerie, horrible grin that peeled his lips back from his teeth and stretched
them thin over his sunken face. It was a look of pure insanity—one that truly
scared Josiah for the first time that night, one that he could never imagine
himself wearing.
The man lifted two fingers to his forehead in mock salute, and Josiah
looked away in disgust. I will never be like you, he thought, hands clenched into
white-knuckled fists, eyes blazing like dying stars, hot against the unfeeling
night that sneered and laughed and nodded, sure, sure. “Never!” he said loudly,
trying to believe it himself.
When he next glanced up, the space between the streetlights was empty.
Relief crept silently through him, yet somehow, he felt even lonelier than before.
He stood motionless for several moments, staring at the space where the
man had been. Then he whirled around and kicked the wall as hard as he could.
His foot throbbed almost as painfully as his heart did; he gritted his teeth and
ignored them both. He knew it—had known it all along—he must be mad.
Look at me, he thought. Thirty-nine years old, and what do I have to show for it?
The truth, he realized in one bitter wave of understanding, was that he
had nothing. No family, no friends. No calling or direction. No talents except
for telling jokes to people in the dark, and what use was humor when no one
was listening?
He had been lying to everyone; he knew that now. He was simply a madman
pretending to be a fool, and in the end, that was all he was.
“Look at me!” he shouted to the now-empty parking lot. “This is what I
am after the show is over, yeah?” His voice cracked, and a laugh bubbled out,
so wild and deranged that it scared him even as it continued to pour from his
mouth. He began to strut back and forth as if in front of an imaginary audience.
“This is the real me! You still laughing?”
He slid down the wall, still chuckling silently. Tears ran from his eyes. The
night was so dark.
What was that I said? He thought to himself. Keep laughing and you’ll never
get lost? It seemed an eternity ago that he had said those words, safe in the midst
of a cocoon of warmth, light, and laughter that was now long gone.
I am lost, he told himself. I’m so lost that I can’t tell what’s three feet in front
of me, but I will keep laughing, by God, even if it kills me!
He threw back his head and let out a great peal of laughter. It radiated
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outward around him, a wall of heat and fire, a tidal wave, and for a moment,
the darkness was beaten back. He laughed until his throat ran dry.
All right, he thought, enough of this. Time to face the night.
He dropped his cigarette and ground it into the dust with his heel. Crossing
the parking lot in a few quick strides, he ducked into his car and started the
engine.
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Jacqueline LeKachman
Grade 11
Upper St. Clair High School
The Voicemail
(Fiction)
The floor is hard and unsympathetically cold behind my back, a wintry bed of
wood. The chill permeates through my thin shirt right to the bone, frigid as
the airy mist of an exhaled breath on a freezing day—the breath of some lost,
wandering phantom who, upon vainly seeking some comfort from a world in
which it no longer belongs, exhales in resignation. I imagine the breath twisting
and floating in convoluted tendrils until, after drifting aimlessly through the air
for a time in the same fruitless pursuit, it simply . . . evaporates, never to exist
again. Disintegrated. Destroyed.
Gone.
I stare at the expanse of ceiling above me. The darkness cloaks its edges in
inky black, concealing any beginning or end of the little slice of infinity. In fact,
the darkness is so complete that I cannot even see my hand in front of my face.
The room is my own little galaxy, my personal outer space, I think absently.
But where are the stars?
She used to love stars. Maybe that was why she loved cities so much. After
all, what is more impressive than the feat of harnessing artificial stars? She had
her own man-made solar system right in front of her, twinkling on the skyline
every night. So much light.
I consider, for the millionth time, listening again to the voicemail, though
I know what I will find. I know the heart-wrenching emotion, the crushing
misery. We are good friends, misery and I. Misery is my rapacious shadow,
corrupted by its cupidity for anguish.
Yet . . . the phone, an agent of affliction, is already in my hands. It never
leaves me. She never leaves me. Shaking, I select the message and choose speaker,
letting her voice fill the void above me.
The familiar words pierce the darkness—I already have them memorized—
and I shudder at the familiarity. If it were not for the overwhelming emptiness of
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the galaxy, I could swear she is right beside me. Of course, she is nowhere near.
What could she possibly be doing in this empty, starless black hole? Although,
maybe it makes sense, in a strange, backward way: she would be a lone shooting
star in the loneliest galaxy in space.
“—me again. I know there’s been tension lately, but I just really need you
to pick up . . .”
As her voice continues to rise with that same intense, furtive urgency, I
imagine a shooting star soaring overhead, persevering up, up, still up, until it
arches to the climax of its flight. It hovers for a split second, and the illusion feels
so real that for a second I swear the shining star of hope illuminates my ceiling.
As I watch, the star falls, crashing to the ground with a final, reverberating
smash. With it rises the tide of despair, and the galaxy becomes a pitch black
wave lurking overhead. I lie paralyzed, no more able to move than I was able
to help her.
There is no oxygen to spare in a black hole. The hopelessness is choking me.
Short Prose
Mom insists that I must stop moping. “Honestly, you can’t keep this up for
the rest of your life,” she scolds halfheartedly as she watches me over her cup
of coffee. Mom has been drinking a lot of coffee lately, as if she believes life
will return to normal if she just continues her normal habits and hides from
the truth behind her oversized coffee mug. “Why don’t you do something with
friends today? I know Allison has been dying to do something with you lately.”
I’m impressed at this suggestion. As if I’m in any state to go out with
friends. It’s not like
Mom is in a great state to be giving me advice, either. I examine her straw
hair, her hallowed face. She’s a ghost of her former self.
“Sure, Mom.” I smile tightly and raise my eyebrows into a doubtful expression.
“I’ll give her a call.”
Her thin brows narrow, and her tired eyes suddenly look much less like
a mess of faded watercolors. “If you don’t do something, I’ll know. I mean it!”
she calls after me as I push my chair back with a loud scrape and turn to leave
the room.
It is an empty promise, a flimsy vow. I wonder, if our family had been one
that actually communicated effectively, if I could be different. Better. Maybe we
would be okay right now—not just Mom and I, but Evila, too. I may not feel
incapable of having a fun time with a person I used to consider a close friend. I
may not be a lone satellite in a galaxy of grief and confusion and a whole host
of deep, black feelings.
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As I stalk up the stairs to my room, my thoughts drift back to last summer.
I see us, Evila, and me, laughing in the backyard. The breeze kisses Evila’s
forehead, making her hair stream through the air like the tail of a pale yellow
kite dancing in the wind. The sunlight reflects off the glimmering strands, as
if she were an angel and her hair were rays of light shining off her halo. I was
always secretly a little jealous of that hair. In my vision, she runs her hand
through the front strands, a habit she always had . . . before. Before it became
after.
If I close my eyes now, I can pretend. I will paint the picture of how I want
life to be in my mind, and I will be there . . . but she is already fading, leaving
in a gilded flash of golden hair and sunlight.
My eyes snap open, and misery hands me my phone without my consent.
Before I can protest, her voice surrounds me.
“—Please. You’re the only one I can call, you know Mom would kill me.
Please, just . . . call me back—”
She breaks off with a sob. I inhale sharply, but the air only strangles me.
Every time, it gets me. I suppose I should be used to it now.
I wish I had listened. I wish I hadn’t pushed her so far. Maybe now I
wouldn’t be choking on air, being betrayed by my own weak body.
Misery reaches out and slaps me across the face, and I accept the stinging
blow.
When school starts, I discover that the place is a minefield. Every corner I
turn, I see her smiling or waving or opening her locker. Every step I take, she’s
illusively one step ahead. I begin to feel as if one wrong step, and the world will
explode, obliterating anything in the way.
Allison tries halfheartedly to start some conversation at my locker. I can
tell from her shifting her weight every thirty seconds and her constantly darting
eyes that my unresponsiveness is making her uncomfortable. Her normally
bronzed, open face is twisted into a slight grimace, and her eyebrows are drawn
tight over her usually wide, brown eyes. She fiddles with the tassels of her
sweatshirt as she speaks, looking as if she smells something sour.
Listening to her stumble over her words, I imagine a rusty, archaic typewriter,
well past its prime, stuttering and shaking as its operator attempts to
assemble coherent thoughts. I watch insistent fingers pound dusty, cracked
letters, which squawk loudly with objections and produce only a few disjointed
fragments.
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Words are just ink splotches on paper that form random shapes to which
we assign meaning; words are only consonants and vowels that comprise a
variety of sounds in the air.
However, though supposedly insubstantial, words are indeed vital to our
humanity, I decide. It is when we are deprived of these seemingly rudimentary
means of communication that we are all but rusty typewriters, wheezing over
our thoughts.
“So, are you, um, excited about, uh . . . classes?” Allison clunkily interrupts
my brooding and smiles nervously, eyes cast away, anywhere but on me.
I lift one shoulder in response.
“Should be an easy, uh, last year, huh?”
I half-smile vacantly, observing from behind my steel partition a group of
kids I know Evila used to greet in the hallways.
“I am going to, um . . . miss summer, though. Aren’t you?”
The kids don’t look upset. One boy toward the front of the group calls out
to a blonde across the hall with a heart-shaped face and big, blue eyes framed
by dark lashes. She looks down bashfully before happily waving back.
“Really, Ava!” Allison snaps. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You’re
not even looking at me!”
I wonder if the boy even knows the difference between Evila and that
other girl.
“Ava!”
I turn back to Allison, surprised by the biting tone of voice.
She huffs, her cheeks tinted with belligerent red. “You need to get it
together! I know you’re having a hard time right now, I get it, I’m trying to be
here for you, but I can’t do it all alone! And I definitely can’t keep doing this
for another yea—are you even listening?”
Her voice shoots up an octave, and I belatedly realize that I’m drifting again,
letting the crowd of people engulfing me transport me to another time, during
a different summer. I only vaguely notice Allison stomp away in exasperation.
The absent-minded chatter becomes hundreds of voices shouting song
lyrics. The shuffle of footsteps and squeak of sneakers against linoleum floors is
the pounding of drums and the crash of symbols. The air is a wonderful mixture
of perfume and sweat and youthful yearning so palpable I can almost taste it.
Evila and I are jumping and colliding and laughing hopelessly at one another as
we twist and turn to the beat of the music. Her complexion is florid, as I’m sure
mine is—we both used to get flushed so easily—and her smile illuminates her
whole face, making her sapphire eyes sparkle with life. Her hair whips around
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
her, a golden tornado, as she spins around in circles with her arms above her
head, as if about to take off in flight.
I blink, and I am back in a crowd, but the drums are just footsteps, the
shouting is just the white noise of hallway chatter. Tan linoleum tiles span as
far as the eye can see.
But the song still rings in my ears. Behind my eyelids, Evila is still dancing.
Mom is fed up now. I can tell. She thinks it’s been too long. I can feel her
inspecting me as she stirs her coffee so hard that some spills on the table. I can
imagine her expression without even turning around—pursed lips, narrowed
brows, and sharp eyes standing out in her somewhat gaunt face.
“Ava, how’s ski club going?” she asks one day as she rapidly stirs the coffee.
The rattling sound of the spoon on the cup is unhinging. Clink clink scrape,
clink clink clink clink scrape!
“I wouldn’t know,” I say emptily, trying to tune out the screeching as I grab
an apple from the fridge.
“Ava.” She frowns disapprovingly, her brows dipping lower. “You used to
love ski club.”
Scrape! Clink clink clink clink scrape!
I do not respond. There is no way to vocalize my new aversion to the highspeed
sport, or to any means of dangerous transport, for that matter. Fear hums
in the bus engine, and terror sings to me in a bike’s bell.
She sighs in dissatisfaction, and I can tell she is switching tactics. Her
patience is splintering. The dance of the spoon against the cup increases its
tempo, frantic. My heart feels like it is beating the same rhythm. Why can’t
she just stop stirring?
“Okay, I can’t do this,” she says suddenly.
I faintly feel surprise and glance over to her.
She looks fiery, her shoulders taut and her thin wrists tense as she stirs. “I
mean, it’s been over a year!” She’s close to shouting. Scrape, scrape, clink! “I need
you to compose yourself here. I mean, think about me for a second!”
Scraaaape!
At this, my mounting aggravation overflows, and rage bursts from the dam
I have built in front of my mouth to lash her. My anger is so red hot that I barely
see her anymore. I am rendered unable to formulate a single sentence to properly
express the fire within me, so my thoughts savagely collide and chafe together,
ripping and fragmenting into insufficient specks of the impossible fury I really
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feel, until the flaming heat of furious and bad and ugly combusts in a fantastic
explosion of unrestrained fervor!
“Of all selfish things!” I yell. I am an ignited typewriter searing paper into
shreds, a blazing satellite erupting in flames as it hurtles down from its black
hole. “Maybe if you had been thinking a little less about you, nothing would have
happened! But no! And still, you haven’t learned—would you stop that clinking!”
Fuming, I pound up the stairs, slam my bedroom door, and collapse against
it. As suddenly as my passion sparked, it has now been smothered as the black
hole inevitably sucks me back to its inky depths. How do you burn with no air,
no light? I relinquish my autonomy to the starless, hopeless cycle. I struggle to
refocus my eyes in the eternal darkness and fail, fail again, fail once more, fail,
fail, fail. . . . I wonder if this is how it felt for Evila. How do you see nothing?
How do you live in nothing?
More than any other feeling, though, disbelief has me reeling as I drift
aimlessly through my galaxy because I cannot believe that woman, of all people,
cannot understand.
It’s not just the guilt constantly devouring me, gnawing at my skin, my
mind, and my soul. It’s not just the remorse that isolates me in my galaxy of
black misery and, when on occasion I encounter some paltry show of hope,
brandishes me as an alien to be contained away from all earthly kindness.
It’s realizing the magnitude of what has been lost that snatches my breath
away and stomps out any trifling flicker of light.
Because we will never walk across a stage together to graduate, rolling
our eyes at all the pompous fuss but secretly loving it. We won’t open college
acceptance letters together, excited and inspired by our new futures. I’ll never
be her maid of honor on her wedding day, and she will never be mine. I won’t
even see her at my wedding, and she will never even have one.
But even more than that, it’s the little things.
She won’t ever beg me to do her laundry again because she hates doing hers
so much. She won’t ever add to her collection of souvenir pennies. She won’t stay
up late with me talking, or pose with me in pictures with her head tilted just
slightly to the left because it “makes her forehead look better.” She won’t ever
type with one finger again. She won’t smile at me or yell or whisper or laugh. I
can’t even remember her laugh, because I haven’t heard it for almost two years.
We won’t ever age together, because she was frozen at seventeen. Preserved
in crushed metal and gravel and blood.
I think again about that last night before she drove away from me for the
last time. I can hear myself, screaming—I hate you! I hate you! I wish you would
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disappear! My voice rings in my ears, guttural. I don’t even remember what she
said, but I remember seeing the call and the voicemail. I remember scoffing,
simmering in my petty anger. I ignored both.
Why couldn’t I have answered? Let go of my pride? Why didn’t I at least
listen to the voicemail? The poisonous fingers of regret reach out and constrict
my chest, and my breathing increases.
I didn’t listen to it until it was too late, in the morning. Long after the
galaxy of stars she loved so much had permanently vanished from her view,
extinguished with terrifying ease by the eternal blackness that now grips me
in a kind of living death. Even then, I didn’t think to go to her right away. But
then, of course, I found out the hard way that you can’t run away from your
problems . . .
All sisters fight. But their fights don’t usually result in the death of one
of them.
“Ava, it’s me again. I know there’s been tension lately, but I just really need
you to pick up. Please. You’re the only one I can call, you know Mom would
kill me. Please, just . . . call me back. I’m sorry about what I said, okay? And I
know . . . I know you didn’t mean it either. But please come pick me up, I feel
like I’m . . . I’m losing control. Like I could . . . crash. Please call me. I need
you. Okay? I lov—”
A screech, a scream, and a crunch.
The voicemail ends.
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Julian Riccobon
Grade 12
Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School
Short Prose
Baby Steps
(Fiction)
Dragon Claws
1908–1915
“Pain is beauty, Jie Jie.” Mama’s fingers dug into my flesh like dragon claws as
she wrapped the footbinding bandage around my toes. “If you want a husband,
you must endure the pain.”
Over and over the bandage looped, a cloth serpent coiling around me in a
bone-splintering embrace. I knew that Mama would scold me if I squirmed, so I
kept still as a jade statue, even though I could feel the arch of my foot bending.
My toes wanted to say hello to my heels.
“You are clay, Jie Jie,” Mama said. And I pictured sticky earth spinning on a
potter’s wheel. Born from the riverbanks, it was just a lump of clay, but if shaped
by a potter’s nurturing fingers, it could become a masterpiece. To be beautiful,
I needed to bear the heat of the kiln, but did I really want to face the flames?
Maybe I would rather be a shapeless lump.
“You are clay,” Mama repeated, “because you can be shaped into something
beautiful before you set.” It was too late for Mama, though—she was no longer
a young girl, no longer moldable because her clay had hardened ages ago.
I followed Mama’s wistful gaze down to her shoes. Mama’s feet were tiny,
folded like lotus petals and squeezed into dainty shoes. After her footbinding,
her feet had measured three inches from toe to heel. They were golden
lotuses—the perfect feet that made every woman blush with envy.
My seven-year-old feet already felt big and clumsy, but maybe I could
measure an acceptable four inches if I followed Mama’s instructions. You must
endure the pain.
“What about Baba?” I blurted. “He doesn’t like pain.”
A storm cloud rolled over Mama’s brow, and I knew that I’d brought up
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
the forbidden topic—Baba. Out all day, but home after dark. The stench of
the opium den always clinging to his clothes. When Baba puffed away at his
dream stick, his poisonous vapors trickled upstairs. At first, I’d confused his
pipe smoke with the incense we burned for our ancestors, but my nose quickly
learned the difference.
Ever since he’d injured his leg working in the fields, Baba had turned to
opium. It had sucked him in with promises of sugar-sweet ecstasy, killing his
pain, but slowly killing him, too.
Once, Mama had tried hiding Baba’s pipe, but he’d torn apart the kitchen
to find it and had punished her with a stinging handprint on her cheek. When
I was little, I thought it was a game, so I helped Baba overturn all the woks
and dishes as he hunted for his pipe. After Baba slipped into his opium-haze,
I helped Mama pick everything up again, placing porcelain fragments in her
shaking hands.
Despite this, Mama still cooked Baba’s meals. Still wore the lotus slippers
he’d given her. Still told me that he didn’t mean to hurt us.
I didn’t believe her.
“Pain reminds you that you’re alive,” Mama told me now, tying the last
bandage. “Opium makes you feel dead. Now stand. Walk to the window.”
I stared down at the bindings that smothered my feet. Mama had soaked
the bandages and wrapped them tight, and now there was only the hard part:
walking. All the blood had drained from my feet, leaving only a tingle behind,
but when I stood, spikes of agony clawed up my legs. Under the bandages, my
toes were bent beneath me so my weight would crush them. That was how
footbinding worked. Small feet were perfect, and my feet . . .
My feet were blazing. The kiln was burning me.
“I can’t,” I yelped.
“You must. Do you want to remain unmarried forever? Or worse, marry an
opium dopey?” Mama’s voice was a porcelain shard. “Do you want to be unloved
all your life?”
No, I wanted to attract a beautiful husband with my beautiful feet and bear
a beautiful son. If I didn’t fulfill my duty, shame would fall over my ancestors
like a funeral shroud. If I disappointed Mama, she’d never stroke my hair with
silk-soft fingers again. And that would hurt more than broken bones.
So I walked, one baby step at a time.
The next hour was a nightmare of stabbing pain, my bones screaming as I
traipsed from window to chair, chair to window. “Ten times across the room,”
Mama said. “Then you can rest.” But on my ninth try, I stumbled into the wall,
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and I cringed, expecting the sting of Mama’s palm and her hiss of worthless
daughter.
Instead, she folded an arm around my shoulder and guided me to the bed.
As I sank onto the blanket, my burning toes breathed a sigh of relief.
“We should’ve started earlier,” Mama said. “I know it hurts, but only lotus
feet can carry you down the best road to the future.” She stroked my hair, the
pain in her eyes almost as heavy as the pain in my feet. “Rest now, my little ox.
Tomorrow, we’ll try again.”
Short Prose
“Try again, Mei Mei,” I said. Try again, Little Sister. “You can do it.”
Mei Mei sprawled on the floor, her baby legs curled up beneath her. She
was a tiger cub, muscles coiled and ready to spring—she just needed to find
her footing. “Stand,” I told her, adopting the harsh tenderness of Mama’s voice.
“Walk to the window.”
Planting her pudgy hands on the floor, Mei Mei rose on wobbly feet. I
reached out to steady my sister, but her legs were strong and her strides were
sure. Not even a year old yet, and soon she’d be able to outrun me. But for now,
our tottering steps matched perfectly. Her baby feet, and my bound ones.
When we reached the window, Mei Mei lost her balance and plonked down
on my lotus shoe. “Foot,” she said, hugging my ankle. Seven years had bent my
toes inward, folding the sole of my foot into a cleft. During my footbinding
years, the excruciating pain had made it impossible to walk downstairs. But
now my feet were numb, like Baba’s opium smoke had drifted upstairs and
deadened my feet.
From the bed, Mama watched our progress, strands of silver streaking across
her face. The same seven years hadn’t been kind to Mama. When Baba had died,
all he’d left behind was a heavy debt. Now we counted every coin Mama earned
from needlework, counted every grain of rice before we swallowed.
Please let me help, Mama, I always pleaded.
But she always shook her head. You can only help by marrying a wealthy
husband. The only way is tiny feet.
Abandoning my lotus shoes, Mei Mei crawled to the bed, where Mama
scooped her up and blew a tuft of hair from her face. “Your turn will come soon,
Mei Mei,” she said. “Soon you’ll have lotus feet.”
But Mei Mei’s turn never came.
4
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Tiger Paws
1921
“Hurry up, Jie Jie!”
Mei Mei dragged me along through the streets of Pink Lotus Village, and
I struggled to keep up. Once, my sister’s feet had matched mine, but now she
was seven, and her feet were growing, unimpeded by bandages. Our feet would
never fall in harmony again.
“I can’t, Mei Mei,” I whispered. Every time Mama made us run errands,
a bolt of fear crackled through me because I couldn’t bear the townspeople’s
piercing gazes.
But Mei Mei was a brazen tiger. “Stares won’t hurt you,” she said. “You
need to be brave. Find your worst fear and stare it in the eye, because courage
is beauty.”
Despite her reassurance, my legs still wobbled more than usual. As shutters
swung open and people peered out, whispers assaulted me like knuckles boxing
my ears. There goes Lotus Girl. Her feet are symbols of the backwards ways. See how
she staggers like a drunken rooster.
Your lotus gait will attract wealthy men, Mama had told me. They’ll drool like
dogs when they see you totter past with wobbling hips. But she was wrong. The China
of her girlhood had disappeared.
When I’d started footbinding, Emperor Puyi had held the throne, but in
1912 the Ching Dynasty had toppled. Now China will change, Mama had said.
New ruler means new rules. And one new rule had shocked us all—footbinding
was outlawed. Girls would no longer cram their feet into slippers or walk to
break their bones. At first, mothers kept binding, daughters kept walking.
But the revolution spread, and now men frowned at my lotus feet. Times had
changed, and I couldn’t keep up on my tiny feet.
“Hurry!” Mei Mei squealed again, and I hurried.
Though only half my size, my sister was twice as bold. She led me by the
hand across the marketplace, zigzagging from merchant to merchant until my
shopping basket was full. Our last stop was the doctor’s house, where I picked
up Mama’s headache medicine, while Mei Mei shed her shoes and squished mud
between her toes.
“Aiya. You shouldn’t do that, Little Tiger,” I said. “We’re visiting Uncle
tomorrow. What will he think when he sees you all muddy?” And what would
Mama think? She would become a fire-spitting dragon if she saw Mei Mei’s
naked feet. Foolish daughter! Mama would’ve cried. A woman’s feet are private and
must be shielded from men’s eyes.
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“I’m still the same girl under the mud,” Mei Mei said, and I sighed.
“Come on, then. Mama is waiting for us.”
The sun skimmed the horizon as we headed home, me teetering along
the road and Mei Mei sloshing through the rice paddies, drifting farther and
farther until I called her back. Ever since my sister could walk, Mama had tied
a leash around her, but Mei Mei had always wriggled free. The tiger hated being
cooped up.
All around us, crickets vocalized in the grass, coaxing out the moon with
their chirruping song. “It’s getting late,” I called. “We can’t dawdle.”
But Mei Mei was stalking through the grass with her rump tilted skyward
as she hunted for crickets. A giggle escaped my mouth, but Mei Mei shushed
me and sprang forward to trap a cricket between her cupped palms. Streaks of
sunset gleamed in her eyes as she sat back to study the insect’s reedy legs. “I’m
too fast for you,” Mei Mei whispered.
“Maybe it’s a lucky cricket,” I said, kneeling beside her. “It could bring our
family prosperity.”
“Prosperity?” Mei Mei snorted, and my words died in my throat. She’d never
inhaled Baba’s thundercloud of opium, never traced the bruises on Mama’s face,
never saw my moon-shadowed tears. But she still knew that a thousand crickets
could never change our family’s rotten luck.
Mei Mei buried her face in the folds and valleys of my dress. “Jie Jie, Mama
wants to bind my feet before my clay sets. But I like my clay soft.”
Despite the new laws, Mama still wanted to bind Mei Mei’s feet. I can’t join
our ancestors until I see you both safely married, she’d said. But every time Mama
rolled out the bandages, Mei Mei fled the house on her tiger paws, leaving Mama
tottering in the dust.
“You’re too fast for Mama,” I said finally, embracing Mei Mei.
“Promise you won’t let her catch me?” she mumbled into my sleeve.
I hesitated, but my sister’s eyes demanded an answer. “I promise.”
When Mei Mei cracked open her fingers, the cricket slipped from its cage.
Gazing after it, Mei Mei stretched out her toes—Aiya, her mud-caked toes—and
grasped a flower by its stem.
“That’s a pretty one, Little Tiger.” I plucked the blossom from my sister’s
toes and tucked it in her hair, but Mei Mei stiffened at my touch.
“No!” The sunset died in Mei Mei’s eyes as she shook the blossom from her
hair. “No flowers. No lotuses.”
The petals fluttered away on the breeze.
Short Prose
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•
The next morning, Uncle wobbled up to Pink Lotus on his bicycle, a cart trailing
behind him. “So big!” he told us, grinning. “You both have grown.”
As Mama watched from the doorway, Mei Mei and I clambered into the
cart for the ride back to Uncle’s farm. We couldn’t have traveled there otherwise.
Not with my tiny feet.
“Be back by nightfall,” Mama called. “And please. Stay away from the mud.”
“Of course, Mama,” I said.
But at Uncle’s farm, Mei Mei headed straight for the mud. Unable to
chase after her, I joined Auntie in the kitchen, but every few minutes, Mei Mei
scampered back inside to dump handfuls of wildflowers in my lap. Once, she
scrambled up onto my lap, but I pushed her away and smoothed out my dress.
“You’re not a baby anymore,” I said. “Run along, Mei Mei.”
She did. But not before sticking out her tongue.
“Ah, sisterly love.” Auntie chuckled, watching Mei Mei race out into the
fields. “Your sister looks up to you. Wants to be like you when she’s older.”
“No, she doesn’t.” I gazed down at my lotus shoes. “That’s the problem.”
Silence joined us in the kitchen. Outside, Uncle called to his oxen as they
dragged their plow, and from the window, I watched their clomping progress
until the teapot’s whistle drew me back inside.
“Your Mama had an iron will, too, you know,” Auntie said. “When she
started footbinding, we needed to wrestle her into the bandages. She heard me
sobbing as my feet were bound, and knew she was next.” Hobbling over to the
table, Auntie filled my teacup. “When she married your Baba, he crushed her
dragon spirit.” Auntie sighed. “But dragons are meant to be free creatures.”
I tried to picture young Mama hiding behind a paper partition, her eyes
wide as she watched the shadow puppet of her staggering sister. Somehow, I’d
never thought about Mama’s footbinding. I’d always assumed her golden lotuses
had magically shaped themselves, but Mama must’ve suffered just as much as
I had. If not more.
“Speaking of free creatures,” Auntie said, “you should call in your sister,
before it gets dark.”
With a nod, I shuffled to the door and gazed out at the gold-plaited fields.
“Little Tiger,” I called. And there she was, sprinting barefoot through the wheat
towards Uncle’s oxen. Mei Mei’s eyes were turned skyward, blind to the path
ahead. She was small, so small that Uncle didn’t see her. She was fast, but not
fast enough to cross the oxen’s path in time. “Mei Mei!” I screamed.
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For a sickening moment, time turned honey-thick. The oxen plowed
onward, but Mei Mei kept running. Aiya, I was dying to run to her and grasp
her hand. But how could I with my lotus feet?
Mei Mei’s shriek of pain rang out like the teapot’s whistle. Long and shrill
and pitiful.
Short Prose
Over and over the bandage looped. As Uncle wrapped Mei Mei’s leg in a tourniquet,
I steadied her with trembling hands, my fingers sticky with scarlet. My
sister groaned, and her eyes fluttered open, falling on the bandage.
“No, I won’t do it!” Mei Mei mewled like a tiger cub, struggling to shake
off the bandages. “You can’t make me, Mama!”
“Shhh. It’s okay, Little Tiger,” I whispered, cradling her head in my lap.
Why hadn’t I let her sit there earlier?
“She won’t make it without a doctor.” Uncle sank into a chair. “And the
nearest doctor lives in Pink Lotus, too far away.”
Blood soaked Uncle’s shirt—not just Mei Mei’s but also his own. While
trying to rescue her from the panicked oxen, he’d injured his arm, and now his
face was moonlight-pale—paler than his silver hair. If Uncle wasn’t careful, he
could lose as much blood as Mei Mei. With a sinking heart, I realized that the
only man in the house couldn’t save my sister.
I knew what I needed to do.
Planting a kiss on Mei Mei’s clammy cheek, I stood and wobbled towards
the door. “Where are you going?” Auntie asked.
“To Pink Lotus.”
Ox Hooves
1921
4
The road to my future was waiting.
Not the smooth path Mama had envisioned, but a road littered with ruts
and mud puddles. The ribbon of dirt stretched towards the feverish-red horizon,
winding through fields and rice terraces, around bamboo stalks and under
ginkgo trees. The road looked like one of my bandages whenever I unraveled
them and let them trail across the floor. Except the road stretched much farther
than any bandage.
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A thousand steps waited ahead of me, but my journey would begin with
one step. A baby step. So I closed my eyes and pictured the upstairs window
at home.
“Stand,” I told myself. “Walk to the window.”
And I set off.
After years of being bound, my feet had become opium-numb. But I hadn’t
been walking long before my ankles began to burn.
Even more painful was my tortoise pace. How much time had passed since
I’d left Mei Mei? Out here, there weren’t any milestones to mark my progress.
Just the drip-drip-drip of blood seeping through my broken toes, and the crack
of shifting bones.
Rest. I needed rest, but I couldn’t stop. I needed to outrun the trickle of
Mei Mei’s lifeblood draining away. Hurry up, Jie Jie!
Before long, rainclouds rolled over the valley and wrung themselves out,
drip-drip-dripping as the road flooded like a rice paddy, and a thousand puddles
reflected shadow puppets of the world above. With every step, watery ghosts
grasped my feet, and I paused to yank my lotus shoes from the sucking mud.
If I ever reached Pink Lotus, I would be filthy. But I was still the same girl
under the mud.
The sun had died behind the clouds, so now I shuffled on in darkness. I
couldn’t see the footprints I left behind, but I could feel them in my bones.
As I staggered along, mist filled the valley, traces of opium-smoke curling from
a giant dream stick. Overhead, a dragon showered the valley with tears, and I
longed to weep with her.
Mei Mei and I hadn’t returned by nightfall, like I’d promised Mama. I
could picture the worry lines wrinkling Mama’s brow as she paced our home.
Where are those girls? she would say, but not in her dragon voice. No, her voice
would be a porcelain vase webbed with cracks.
The dragon cried, and the mist hung so heavy that I could only pray I
hadn’t wandered off the road. “Mama,” I sobbed, doubling over to clutch my
burning legs. “What should I do?” But I already knew her answer.
You must endure the pain.
•
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As the night stretched on, crickets crooned in the grass, guiding me home.
Ahead of me, a ghost of laughter drifted in the darkness, and I spotted Mei
Mei sprinting past me. I knew it was just my fevered mind playing tricks on
me, but I stumbled after her anyway.
My sister streaked through the rain, hopping and bounding and soaring
like a cricket as I struggled to keep up. Her braids trailed behind her as she
ran, so close I could almost grasp them.
I’m too fast for you.
Short Prose
An eternity later, the mist parted, and I glimpsed the distant glow of lanterns—
Pink Lotus Village, just a few baby steps away.
As I wrestled the wind, I felt like an ox hauling a heavy plow. All my pain
was cast in iron, and I bore the weight on my tiny heels. If Mama was a dragon
and Mei Mei a tiger, then I was an ox, strong and loyal. Don’t stop now, little ox.
Mama’s voice echoed in my ears. And she was right. If I let my knees buckle,
then I would never rise and Mei Mei would die. So the ox lumbered on.
Only lotus feet can carry you down the best road to the future, Mama had told
me, but lotus feet were designed for strolls in the garden, not long journeys.
I was foolish to think I needed tiny feet. They could only attract a husband,
and I didn’t need another dopey like Baba. Why did I need a man to make
Mama proud?
It wasn’t my lotus feet that made me beautiful, but the pain that I’d faced,
the courage that had carried me this far, the love that made me plant one foot
in front of the other. Love was beauty, and my love for Mei Mei was stronger
than a thousand oxen. My dress was mud-soaked, my hair wind-tangled, my
shoes frayed from scraping the ground. But I was still beautiful.
Now I longed for the days of my girlhood, longed to unravel my bandages
and twirl them in the wind like a ribbon dancer. I wanted to splash through
mud puddles and sprint like a tiger and pluck flowers with my toes. It was too
late for Mama—too late for me. Our clay had set.
But it wasn’t too late for Mei Mei. Not yet.
By the time I reached Pink Lotus, twin trickles of crimson trailed behind
me. The houses slept with shuttered eyes, but when I rapped on the doctor’s
door, a light flickered on and the door slid open. Behind it, the doctor gasped.
“My sister is hurt,” I choked. “Little Tiger.”
Then I collapsed, my feet blazing like the fire of a kiln.
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•
When my eyes fluttered open, the bolts of lightning in my feet had died down
to dull thunder. Outside, rain whispered, and beside me, Mama Dragon wept,
clutching my hand in one claw and Mei Mei’s in the other. “My beautiful girls,”
she sobbed. “My poor, beautiful girls.”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I murmured, but her silk-soft finger silenced me.
“No,” Mama said. “I am sorry, Jie Jie.” So I closed my eyes, and she stroked
my hair, and the throbbing waned in my lotus feet until love drowned out my
pain.
“Try again, Mei Mei,” I said. “You can do it.”
Mama’s fingers caressed Mei Mei’s leg as she unwrapped the bandages,
over and over until they coiled at the foot of the bed. My eyes traveled down
the length of Mei Mei’s leg—from knee, to shin, to ankle . . . And that was
where it ended. Once, my sister had been the fastest in our family, but now our
paces matched again. Me shuffling the lotus gait, and Mei Mei limping with
her stump.
“I can’t.” Mei Mei’s voice held no pain—just apathy, like her tiger spirit had
drifted away with the ghost of her foot.
“Try,” Mama murmured, brushing a tuft of hair from Mei Mei’s face. “I’ll
get your crutch for you.”
As she hobbled off, I slid closer to Mei Mei. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “If I
could’ve been faster—” My voice cracked like porcelain, so I tried again. “If I
hadn’t pushed you away—”
“No. It’s not your fault.” Mei Mei said. “You just wanted to please Mama,
to be beautiful so someone would love you.” She hung her head. “I know how
that feels, wanting to be wanted. Second Daughter is loved even less than First
Daughter.”
Pulling Mei Mei onto my lap, I hugged her. She felt thinner than before,
but she was still the same girl. Still my little sister. “I love you, Little Tiger.”
Mei Mei sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “I love you, too, Jie Jie.”
When Mama returned, we both hoisted Mei Mei to her feet, and she took
up her bamboo shaft, a little walking stick for a little tiger. For a moment, we
stood there—a dragon, a tiger, and an ox. All with broken feet, all leaning on
each other for support. Then Mama and I wove our arms through Mei Mei’s,
and together we limped to the window, towards the beckoning sunrise. We
limped—one baby step at a time.
84

Julian Riccobon
Grade 12
Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School
Short Prose
Tigers and Elephants
(Fiction)
Elephant
When I landed in Vietnam, I didn’t expect Charlie to be a girl.
But here I am, and there she is. The elephant grass hisses in the breeze as
we cross crosshairs, our fingers trembling on our triggers but never pulling.
Charlie. That’s what all the guys call the Viet Cong soldiers in radioslang.
Viet Cong, Victor Charles, Charlie. . . . Whenever I heard it, I pictured
heavily-armed men tramping towards our camp, but I never imagined this.
Never imagined a village of women and children fleeing like a dole of doves under
our hailstorm of lead. Never imagined hunting down a dove. Never imagined
her probing eyes fixed on me. Somehow, this is worse.
“Kill me.” Lowering her rifle, the woman inches forward until my M-16
kisses her temple. “I trust you kill me merciful.”
“I—I can’t.” Not when she’s sitting there, waiting. An executioner’s job is
a lot harder with a willing victim.
“Why?” she says.
Why. Like she wants a bullet through her head. “Because . . . because . . .”
“Because you have heart.” For a second, her eyes soften, but then they flit
back to my rifle barrel. “But heart no good in battle,” she says. “It break quick.”
I’m not sure how to answer that. Something tells me that this girl’s halfmoon
eyes have witnessed far more than I’ve seen, that her hands have done
deeds beyond words. But before I can speak, the girl speaks instead.
“My name Nguyet,” she says, offering her name like an olive branch.
“I’m Robert,” I say. And a heartbeat later I dare to ask, “How old are you?”
“Nineteen,” she says.
“Me too.”
And she offers the ghost of a smile. “We still children.”
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Children. I picture the small bodies sleeping on the road behind me,
scattered before the soldiers like discarded dolls. Even from a distance, I can
hear maternal wails zinging off the rooftops. The sobs pierce my heart.
I also think of another child—my sister sleeping on the top bunk at home,
clutching a stuffed elephant. Jemima had insisted she was too old for Mr.
Twinkle, but the toy snuck back into her bed after she learned I was drafted.
You’d better be the same person when you get back, she told me before I left. Not
broken, okay?
I laughed then. But now, seeing Nguyet’s broken eyes, I know what my
sister meant.
“I know I’m supposed to kill you. But I was never a good shot.” I lower my
rifle. “Go,” I whisper. “While you still can.” And with a nod, Nguyet turns to
take flight, a dove slipping through the talons of a hawk. After she vanishes
into the elephant grass, I stand on shaky legs and return to the village. Along
the way, I avoid the glassy eyes of the other doves, the children who hadn’t
flown fast enough to escape.
4
Tiger
We still children, I’d told Robert, but I feel like an old woman.
At age nineteen, I’m the youngest widow in my village. My husband Quan
stayed with me only a year before marching off to war. Before he left, I stood
on tiptoe to kiss his temple, and three months later, a bullet kissed him in
the same place.
When Quan’s fellow soldiers brought me back his rifle, I took up the cold
instrument and wielded it in his place.
We still children.
Since then, I’ve seen helicopters spraying death down on the forest and men
writhing in napalm typhoons. At first, napalm looks like rain, but it clings to
clothes and blisters skin. Real rain doesn’t burn.
I’ve seen men who doused their bodies in blazing petrol. I’ve seen skeletal
women buried alive, their hearts still beating beneath the dirt.
We still children.
But I’ve also seen sticky-sweet kumquats and peach flowers in blossom. I
remember crunchy mung-bean cookies and cool rain caressing my skin. Not
napalm rain, but real rain.
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That is why I fight. To rescue the Việt Nam of my girlhood from the
shadows of my memory. Already, it is waning with the moon.
Short Prose
In the Viet Cong, we sleep in a new village, a new safe house every night. Instead
of wearing uniforms, we pretend to be Southern villagers—bone-tired farmers,
desperate women haggling for food, starved skeletons that were once people. . . .
It isn’t hard to pretend.
Our strategy is to strike like lightning and disappear before the thunder.
Once, Ho Chi Minh said that our forces were like tigers, and the foreigners
like elephants. Elephants are powerful, but we are quick and never tire.
Sometimes, I long to be a gentler creature, though. Why be a brutal tiger,
when I can be a soaring bird? But my sister soldiers don’t care about birds.
When they are restless, they take potshots at doves for target practice, watching
the birds crumple like origami paper. I always turn away, unable to stare at the
bright feathers and even brighter blood. Instead, I gaze up at the sky.
In the Viet Cong, my job is easy. Shoot anything that moves. No time to
think. No time for questions. But when I gaze up at the moon, I think of Robert
staring down the barrel of his gun at me—not with the glare of a hawk, but
with questions in his eyes. Somehow, those questions saved my life.
Elephant
4
A week after the raid, I return to the ruined village.
I know that I’m offduty, that I should be sleeping in the barracks. But
I’m drawn back to the village like a mosquito drawn to water. When I arrive,
the sinking sun casts long shadows over the rubble. I don’t know what I’m
looking for. Maybe a hint of movement under the smoldering thatched roofs,
maybe a fluttering heartbeat in the fields beyond, maybe a sign that the dove
girl escaped.
“Nguyet,” I say, remembering her name. And she emerges from the edge
of the forest, as if I summoned her just by speaking her name. I freeze in my
tracks, but Nguyet moves closer, edging towards me with tentative steps. When
we’re only a few paces away, she holds out an offering for me.
“Papaya,” I say, stroking the skin of the fruit.
“Đu đủ,” Nguyet says, pressing the papaya into my palms. “Mean same
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thing.” Then she points to a papaya tree across the field. None of the villagers
survived, but somehow the tree is still standing.
“Come,” Nguyet says, and without a word I follow her over to the tree,
where we settle down beneath its shade. We don’t trade words. Don’t need to,
because her gift has spoken a thousand words, and my gesture of sparing her
life has spoken more. We don’t share the same native tongue, but we both know
the taste of papaya.
Together, we split open the papaya and take turns scooping up fingerfuls
of flesh. When there’s nothing left but skin, we challenge each other to spit
seeds down the hill. Mine fall short in the grass, but hers soar over the hilltop
and kiss the sunset.
“You know, each of these seeds will become a tree,” I say. “Years from now,
this field will be blooming with papaya trees.”
“No, not every seed grow,” Nguyet says. “Some not get water, some fall in
bad soil. And even if seed grow, tree die.”
“Why would the trees die?”
“Agent Orange,” she says, gesturing to the leafless trees that mark the edge
of the forest. Agent Orange is the chemical that they spray from the choppers,
to kill the plants and flush out Charlies. With a sinking heart, I realize that
Nguyet is right. The papaya seeds won’t survive long under the death-rain of
Agent Orange.
Placing her last seed in my hands, Nguyet folds my fingers over it. “You
kill my home,” she whispers, but her voice holds no accusation. Just sorrow.
The next time I go wandering, I climb the hillside and stare out over miles of
wilted forest. The naked trees stab skeletal fingers at me, as if they know I’m
responsible.
But at night I lay awake—stargazing, moongazing, thinking. What if ’s fill
my mind, and I can barely keep them from spilling from my mouth. What if
we could win wars by spitting seeds instead of shooting bullets? There would
be less dead people, and a lot more trees.
Tiger
4
“No,” I tell Robert. “War not so simple. People want blood—not papaya.”
Robert starts to speak, but I press a finger to his lips. Every evening, we walk
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this tightrope of a road together, meeting halfway between Robert’s barracks
and the ruined village. Somehow we keep our balance, but there’s a minefield
waiting below us, if we fall.
“Viet Cong soldier not think twice before kill you.” I grip Robert’s shoulders.
“Next time you see soldier, shoot first. Even woman. Even child. No ask
questions. You ask later, if you still alive.”
Short Prose
Later. Questions flood my mind, a steady trickle of doubt. What if I hadn’t
joined the Viet Cong? What if I’d never touched Quan’s rifle? Would I still be
the same girl who caught raindrops on her tongue, never dreaming that she
would soon taste only tears?
There’s no point wondering, though, because that girl is gone. She burned
with my village, and now there’s just a hollow space where she curled up inside
me. All this time, I’ve been fighting to survive when I’m already dead inside.
After my husband died in combat, I returned to my family’s village. But
my home didn’t look like I remembered. Bombs had crumpled the houses and
twisted the streets into hopeless knots. The refugees all streamed in one direction,
but I was a salmon fighting the current to swim upstream. There’s nothing
left, they told me. Turn back. But despite the wreckage ahead of me, I imagined
my family’s house still standing in the rubble, untouched by the inferno.
Inside the ruins of my home, I found only splinters of my childhood.
“Bố,” I whispered into the smoke. “Mẹ.” But my parents didn’t emerge from
their hiding places. I called the names of my sisters, but the only answers came
from down the street, where other voices called out faded names.
Finally, I found the doll. She was lying half-buried in the ashes, as if she’d
just lain down for an afternoon nap, but I still recognized my favorite childhood
toy. Bố had given her to me on my tenth birthday because she was my twin,
with her full-moon cheeks and crescent eyes.
But she didn’t look like me anymore.
When I scooped up the porcelain doll and saw her smiling eyes, something
cracked inside me. “I hate you,” I croaked at her. “How can you smile when
everything is gone?” Then I flung her away, my eyes burning with furious tears.
But after I wiped away my tears, I scrambled after her and dug her from the
rubble. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, clinging to her. “You’re all I have left.”
The doll disappeared into my rucksack, and I’ve carried her with me ever
since.
Now Tết is just around the corner, but I don’t feel like celebrating New Year.
Not without my family. Wandering the streets of Đông Hà and hearing the
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laughter that spills from the windows, I realize that I’m so hungry for human
company that I’ve started feeding on other people’s joy. I have no husband to fold
me in his arms. No mother to feed me until I’m stuffed. No sisters to shower
with presents.
My only family is the dead-faced doll.
Elephant
4
“How long you stay?” Nguyet tries to sound nonchalant, but I can hear the
don’t-let-me-drown desperation that clings to her words.
“I’m supposed to serve one year in Vietnam. Just a few more months, then
I can go home.”
Beside me, Nguyet hugs her knees and gazes out at the moon-streaked
waters of the Sông Hiếu, the river that flows past Đông Hà. At night, Nguyet
and I wander the riverbank, watching the fishing boats sleep in their berths.
“You family wait. They hope you come back.” Nguyet’s brow furrows as she
traces ripples in the water, as if trying to recreate a memory with fleeting strokes.
“You mother. You father. You sister. She almost year older now.”
She’s right—Jemima must be taller now. When I return, she’ll probably use
my shoulders as a measuring stick. And maybe I’ve grown a little, too.
“What about your family?” I ask.
But Nguyet turns away, so I can’t see her eyes. Just the red-raw burns
scarring her neck. From napalm, she’d said earlier, when she noticed me staring.
Stop, drop, and roll not work.
The clouds grumble overhead and start to drizzle. When the raindrops
graze her cheeks, Nguyet flinches as if the rain is blazing napalm. “My family
tree gone,” she says finally. “Not even root left.”
“You know,” I say, “you could always plant a new family tree.”
“What you mean?”
“If you want, you could be my sister.”
“Sister?” Nguyet’s eyes widen, but she shakes her head. “We not share blood.
Only blood make family.”
“When enough blood is spilled, sometimes it mixes,” I say. “We’ve both
faced bullets and tears. We both miss our families. Doesn’t that bond us?”
Nguyet doesn’t answer, so I inch closer and wrap my arm around her shoulders,
just like I did with my sister at home. Whenever it rained, Jemima snuggled
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up against me on the porch swing and we listened to the rain drumming
overhead. I can still feel our hearts beating as one—and now I feel the same pulse
in Nguyet, like there’s a dove fluttering inside her rib cage. We both have heart.
“I have two sisters now,” I say. “They live oceans apart, but I love them
both. Even if I leave soon, I can still write letters. I can still be your brother.”
“Brudder.” Nguyet tries the word on her tongue, the th coming out like a
d. “Brother,” she repeats, and her lips curve up into a crescent. “I alway want
brother.”
As the rain thickens around us, people duck for cover under awnings and
fishermen haul in their boats. But Nguyet and I remain on the riverbank. Tilting
her chin skyward, Nguyet closes her eyes and lets the cool droplets pelt her face,
lets her hair wash over her shoulders like a waterfall of black ink.
Closing my eyes, I do the same. And the rain streaming down my face feels
like a fountain of youth breathing life back into my bones. Feeling the downpour
hit my face, I remember the sweltering summers at home, when I dragged out
the garden hose and pumped it full-blast. Jemima and I always pranced through
the spray, splashing each other and shrieking with laughter.
I’d almost forgotten what it felt like. To be a kid.
Now I turn towards Nguyet, dipping my hand in a puddle and splashing
her. Nguyet’s eyes shoot open, and she flashes me her tiger-glare as she shakes
water from her hair. Then a smile creeps onto her face, and she splashes me back.
The next thing I know, we’re dashing along the Sông Hiếu—me racing
ahead and Nguyet close behind, our feet slipping on the rain-slicked soil. All
around us, children laugh and dance, cupping water in parched palms—so
Nguyet and I join in, adding our laughter to the cascade of voices.
When we finally stop to catch our breath, we turn our gazes skyward and
soak up the moonlight. All around us, silver light filters through a thousand
raindrops, like the moon has melted into tears. Only this time, they are tears
of joy.
“I feel like little girl again,” Nguyet whispers. And she tips back her head
to catch the moon on her tongue.
Short Prose
4
Tiger
For a month, I carry the moonlight in my heart, and it fills the girl-shaped
emptiness inside me. It gives me wings, allowing me to soar above the smoke
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in my dreams. But when the sky shaves the moon down to a sliver, visions of
flight vanish from my dreams, and I transform into a tiger. A flash of stripes
in the grass. A slash of claws and a gnash of teeth. Every night, an elephant’s
trumpet shakes the earth, and my taste buds burst with the tang of blood as I
dig into leathery flesh.
But when I see Robert’s eyes behind the tusks, I freeze. My tiger instincts
scream kill, but the dove whispers wait.
Every nightmare leaves me trembling, but the daymares are worse. I shudder
when I hear the whispered rumors. The Đồng Bắng Division plans to destroy the
American supply base. The elephant won’t stand a chance against our tigers.
I don’t know whether tooth or tusk will win. All I know is that blood will
be spilled.
“Nguyet. What’s wrong?” Robert’s eyes probe my face, but I lower my gaze.
The Sông Hiếu is just a sliver of shadows now, but when I unroll the doll
from my rucksack, her eyes still gleam in the darkness. Somehow, her eyes
always find a reason to shine. “Take her,” I say, pressing my childhood into
Robert’s arms. “She my favorite childhood toy. But I not need her now. I trust
you watch over her.”
Robert cradles the doll—careful, careful, as if afraid he’ll drop her. “I—I
don’t understand,” he says.
And once again, I press my finger to his lips.
“She help you remember me,” I say. “She you sister now.” I can see questions
forming on Robert’s lips, so I shoot down his hopes before they fly too high.
“North Việt Nam come attack American base, tomorrow. They burn everything.”
My eyes sting like the napalm tattoo seared into my neck. “I can’t watch you
burn, brother. You must go. While you still can.”
“But I can’t leave you. You’re my sister.”
“You already have sister.” My voice is like the rumble from a frog’s throat.
“She wait for you across ocean. She wait for year and she count moons till you
come home.” I know because I’ve counted countless moons myself, because I’ve
seen the faces of my loved ones in their craters. I know that Jemima is gazing
up at the same moon. Waiting. “You sister count and she pray and she hope,” I
say. “She hope, Robert. There no hope here.”
“There’s always hope,” Robert says, reaching out to brush my shoulder, but I
pull away, still seeing the tiger claws from my dream. Doesn’t Robert understand
that I’m trying to save him?
“No,” I whisper. With shaking hands, I unsling the rifle from my shoulder
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and level it at Robert. We’ve never turned our weapons on each other, not since
our standoff in the village, but he needs to understand that Việt Nam isn’t just
raindrops and moonlight, isn’t just papayas and porcelain dolls. Not anymore.
My home is a world of tigers and elephants now, a world where Robert and I
can never coexist. “Go!” I say, my voice cracking. “Go home, where you belong.”
With wide eyes, Robert backs away—slowly at first, and then stumbling
to escape. My tormented cries pursue him, nipping at his heels to make sure
he won’t return, and once the fog swallows him, my voice dies away. My rifle
sinks to the ground.
“I sorry, Robert,” I whisper to his ghost. “Go plant seed for me.”
Short Prose
4
Elephant
Nguyet’s warning still rings in my ears like a gunshot, even after I return to the
barracks. I know that I should leave while I still can, but Nguyet’s doll begs me
to stay with gleaming eyes. My year in Vietnam isn’t finished yet, and neither
is my time with Nguyet. My new sister still needs me.
So I stay, and when the sergeant shouts, All available men! I cram into one
of the choppers and rumble towards the battlefield.
The sky is dark as we wade through the muddy trenches, but I can still see
silhouettes darting between the trees—Viet Cong snipers in the jungle. I can’t
decide whether I hope to see Nguyet among the flitting figures or whether I
hope that she’s far away from the battle.
Choppers roar across the sky like metal Valkyries, touching down to collect
departed souls. All around me, hearts are breaking and staining the soil. But
suddenly.
Suddenly, I see the moon rising over the battle.
When Nguyet emerges from the jungle, it looks like her rifle is slung
over her shoulder, until I see fluttering leaves and realize that she’s carrying a
baby tree. Her gunstock has transformed into roots, and her rifle barrel has
blossomed into a flower stalk. The sapling is a nipa palm, but Nguyet carries it
like an olive branch.
As she strides forward, a blanket of silence rolls over the battlefield. Trees
rustle as the enemy snipers shift in confusion, and beside me, whispers trickle
down the trench. Who is she? they say. A Charlie or one of ours? Is she from the
North or the South? What’s with the tree?
The stream of whispers pours faster and faster until it becomes a river, each
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
new question freezing another trigger finger. No ask questions, Nguyet had told
me. But now questions are keeping her alive, forming a shield around her that’s
stronger than an armored tank but fragile as a porcelain doll.
“Brothers,” Nguyet calls in English, sinking to her knees in the no-man’s
land. Then in Vietnamese. “Sisters. Look around you. We all fight for victory,
but there no victory here.” With gentle hands, she carves a hole in the soil and
places the sapling inside. “I fight for life. What you fight for?”
But just as Nguyet starts to fill the hole, someone stops asking questions.
A gunshot rings out, spraying dirt in Nguyet’s face, and then a storm of bullets
streaks toward her. Seeing the storm, Nguyet closes her eyes, tilts back her
head, and welcomes the rain.
“Nguyet!” I shout, but she’s already slumped over, shattered like a broken
doll. The men grab fistfuls of my uniform to hold me back, but I wrench free
and scramble out of the trench. More thunder sounds from the jungle, but the
lightning misses me.
As I crouch beside Nguyet, her eyes flutter open. “Clumsy elephant,” she
murmurs, but a smile tugs at her lips as she glances at the half-buried sapling.
“I try start new family tree.” She coughs. “Plant one last seed. But tree need
water, and sunlight, and someone watch over it.” Nguyet grasps my hand with
fingers as cold as porcelain. “Promise you watch over it, brother?”
“I promise,” I whisper, but I’m not sure if she hears me. Her eyes have
already frosted over with moonlight. With shaking hands, I finish the job that
Nguyet started and tuck the half-planted sapling into its earthen bed.
After the battle, a throbbing chopper spirits me away. There’s shrapnel in my
leg, blood on my hands, a hole in my heart. You’ll be okay, the medic tells me,
but I’m not so sure.
Flying away, I gaze down at the retreating battlefield, and I see a nipa palm
waving good-bye. So I wave back.
Back home, days slip between my fingers, but I hardly notice. I spit papaya seeds,
but they never hit the sun. I catch rain on my tongue, but I never taste the
moon. I plant trees, but a thousand more are gassed and trampled. Sometimes,
it seems futile. It would take hundreds of saplings to beat back the bullets and
napalm, but I need to try.
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When the moon is full, I cradle Nguyet’s doll, and she huddles close to me
for warmth as my tears pepper her face.
Why? I sometimes ask her. Why is it so painful?
And she answers me with sad-smiling eyes. Because you have heart.
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Lemlem Gamble
Grade 12
The Ellis School
Self
(Non-Fiction)
The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.
—Rita Mae Brown
Growing up as a teen in America these days, you get a solid grasp on the latest
slang, as it’s used everywhere in pop culture, especially in music. This slang
has situational definitions created by the generations who use it, but just as
generations define slang, slang can also define generations. By taking a closer
look at slang, you can start to see how words and their meanings reflect and
impact the culture, both positively and negatively. In early 2012, I was eleven
years old and trying to fit in with the “cool kids” by staying in tune with the
hottest trends of that era, one of which was slang. My peers and I had phones
at a very young age, meaning that slang words were used every day, on multiple
platforms, and we were being introduced to slang from all over the world that
was being used throughout Tumblr posts and YouTube videos. While at first
these words were harmless, the definitions grew hateful. Words like “ratchet,”
“gay,” and “sissy” were being used as insults where “ratchet” was used to describe
a “loud and obnoxious female” (specifically black), and “gay” and “sissy” were
used to imply that the receiver of this insult was effeminate. As middle schoolers
we began to have a deeper understanding of these words, giving them a negative
connotation, without knowing this was happening.
This mentality that being black, gay, and feminine is bad was ingrained into
the minds of every preteen at my small school through the use of slang. Every
time a person was called ratchet I thought to myself, “I can’t be too black,” and
I stifled part of my identity. Calling attention to the fact that I was black could,
in my mind, open myself up to the hatred that was directed at my culture. I did
what I had to do to in order to conform to the ideal of my peers. Every time I
straightened the kinks in my hair, chose pearl studs over hoops, and tried to
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convince myself I liked a boy from my history class, I felt relief that I wouldn’t
be the recipient of those insults that day. I convinced myself that painting over
my identity would create a more beautiful picture. The acceptance of my peers
was music to my ears—that is, until I discovered a different tune.
Once I turned 15, I began to discover new music. I dove into the depths
of music streaming websites, clicking through playlists until I found something
that stopped me in my tracks. There were artists out there who were
unapologetic about their identities. I found Janelle Monae, who was unapologetic
about being black and female, Sam Smith, who was unapologetic about being
a member of the LGBT community, and Halsey, who was unapologetic about
being both. These artists and their pride in their identities completely spun my
world, and I begun asking questions—is there a chance that being black, gay,
or female isn’t a bad thing? The belief that being an “other” in any group is a
bad thing, is a mentality that is ingrained in everyone growing up in America.
The other, for example, are those who are transgender as opposed to cisgender,
or black as opposed to being white. Luckily this mentality is one I began to
question before it greatly affected the way I treated people, including myself. I
admit that I still have internalized homophobia, racism, sexism, and transphobia,
but the representation in music sparked change in my mind that, thankfully,
made me want to change the way the world sees the “other.” The reward for
conformity may be that everyone likes you, but the reward for standing up for
what you believe in is that you begin to like yourself.
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Madeline Bain
Grade 11
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Healing
(Non-Fiction)
My house was built when Herbert Hoover was in office. It’s got a purple door and
a slate roof. It’s on top of a hill. The floorboards and hinges creak when it rains.
To get from the sidewalk to the door there are concrete steps, and from the
first floor to the second are glossy wooden ones, the same purple as the door.
The stairs that lead up to our third floor are carpeted with a blue rug from the
previous owners. It’s nice up there on the third floor, beneath the roof of the
whole house, rafters exposed. There is a single windowpane and a wonderful
kind of quiet.
Only recently has our third floor become a place of solace like this. It used
to be the most chaotic place in our home. The place where we tossed all our
stuff. Recycled gift bags and ripped wrapping paper. Plastic bins of doll clothes.
Empty watercolor palettes with warped plastic beds.
“Just put it on the third floor,” my mom would say when my sister outgrew
her jeans again.
“Don’t go on the third floor,” my mom would tell our guests. “We’re moving
some things around right now.”
The rest of my house was never particularly cluttered. For example, only
days after my dad moved into his own place, my mom filled our minivan with
some of his old stuff and left the stuff on his new porch. She went through the
trouble of digging out photos, ceramic bowls, his great aunt’s set of dusty wine
glasses. My mother doesn’t like messy.
Before the divorce, she generally ignored the third floor. A couple times
she tried to inspirit the family to help her clean, but all we’d do is lazily move a
couple boxes around or blow some dust off the shelves. After a few attempts that
ended up being in vain, she seemed to accept the unfortunate but tolerable mess.
The split, however, meant the divvying up of possessions. In the chaos, more
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and more things were tossed up to the third floor. It was harder to ignore, now.
I know it must have eaten away at my mom. She kept her distance entirely from
the door that led up there. She never climbed the carpeted steps.
The windowsill gathered a thick layer of dust. Piles of receipts that my mom
was going to need when she did the taxes in April faded like invisible ink. It was
a barren wasteland full of stuff. The rest of our home was familiar, warm, tidy,
but our secret garden of abandoned projects and unwanted mementos grew just
as well above our heads. It was heavy. It weighed on my mom.
She began talking about cleaning it. It became her project, the third floor.
She fantasized about everything we could do with it.
“You know there’s a bed underneath those piles. We could let guests stay
up there,” she said.
I didn’t realize the significance of these ideas at the time. My mom was
beginning to see the future as something that could be good.
On one rainy weekend, she peeked through the crack in the door. Carefully,
she tiptoed up the blue shag carpet. The smell of mildew and cardboard boxes
permeated the hallway. I could hear her footsteps above me.
Who knows what she did or how she felt that first day, or the Sunday after.
On Monday, the Vets came and picked up one small yellow bag of old clothes.
My mom had thrown in some lonesome gloves, too.
“Just a start,” she said.
The next month, two yellow bags sat on our front porch among our plastic
lawn chairs. My mom had placed a heavy rock on one of the bags to keep it
from blowing away.
After that, the great purge had begun. The process would take a long
time, but at least it was underway. When I got home from school to my large,
looming house, more yellow bags had sprung up like crocuses on the porch.
My mom was letting go.
She didn’t want to get divorced, not really, but it had to happen. She
locked many emotions away on our third floor, stuffing them underneath the
floorboards, pinning them to the ceiling, camouflaging them in the bookshelf.
The walls were painted white with blue clouds like a baby’s nursery. When
it was a sunny day, the light that shone through the sole window made the
space feel holy—a silent, cluttered haven, messy yet serene. As months passed
and things disappeared, the third floor became a sanctuary.
The blue carpet was now exposed everywhere but underneath the metal bed.
A thin mattress rested on the bed’s cold bars. We put a few pillows and blankets
on top, and it became a couch. My sister and I would bring our breakfast up
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
there on Sundays, slowly eating our cereal next to the bright window. Each clink
of the spoon against the bowl was like a wind chime in the silent loft.
My mom loved the process. She’d look forward to getting off work to
organize, reorganize, bag, purge. Countless trips up and down the stairs, yellow
bags strewn across the porch like pick up sticks.
Our friend Jean came over one day in the spring and was shocked when my
mom took her up to see how much cleaner our third floor was looking. Jean was
one of the few people who had seen our attic at its worst. This was because Jean
was a hoarder herself. Years ago, when she’d heard that we had a whole floor of
old stuff, she’d gone up to see if anything of ours caught her eye.
“How did you get rid of everything?” Jean asked, looking around. She
studied the blue carpet, freshly vacuumed that morning, and ran her finger
across the bed frame that was recently dusted.
My mom was proud of her work. She often went up just to sit and admire
the life that she finally had the courage to throw away. No longer were my
father’s high school cross country trophies displayed amidst piles of useless junk.
No longer were my father’s high school cross country trophies displayed at all.
Jean gave us another batch of cookies that she’d made.
“These will be better than last time,” she promised. “I used baking powder
instead.”
We thanked her and showed her to the door. Our neighbors were cutting
their lawn. Fragrant grass clippings blew past in the breeze.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Jean said again. “I never could.”
We shut the door behind her, thanking her for the cookies one last time.
I was having dinner with my neighbors when I received a phone call. It
was my mom.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said. “I’m fine, but I need a little help.”
When I arrived home, having promptly left the table without much of an
excuse, I found my mom precariously holding up a familiar dresser. One end
was balanced on the steps leading down from the third floor, the other end in
her hands.
It was late on a Friday night, and she’d decided she was going to finally
finish the great purge. One large dresser had remained, an artifact from my
dad’s great aunt. It was too big for her to carry by herself, but she couldn’t wait
any longer. Nothing could stand between her and the future of her dreams in
which there was no clutter. No unwanted memories.
Together we lowered the dresser into the hallway on the second floor. Our
attic was almost empty now.
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On Saturday, I didn’t see her around. I’d gone for a run in the morning, and
assumed she was grocery shopping or the like. Noon came and went, and she
didn’t surface, so I creaked open the door and crawled up the stairs to find her.
She was sitting on the floor amidst the light. It was kind of eerie. She
looked very skinny all alone in the large, empty room. But she looked quite at
peace. There was not even a buzzing of silence on the third floor. Pure quiet.
My dad once said that it takes two years to get over a divorce once the
healing process begins. He begun the healing process when he signed his new
lease. She didn’t begin the healing process until many years after.
Once she begun, though, she turned to our house. Our third floor with a
scratchy, royal blue carpet faded from time. Pale walls with gentle clouds painted
on them, a single window that could flood an entire space with only its light. It
smelled like cardboard boxes up there, but my mom didn’t mind. I didn’t either.
I found such silence and calm among the cleanliness. I liked to sit within the
space where my mom healed herself, the space that showed time can fix all.
In the 20 th century when Eastern European Jewish immigrants flooded this
side of town and hundreds of houses went up, mine was among them. These
walls have housed those who are beginning a new life.
Neither me, my sister, nor my mother ever moved up to the third floor. It’s
understood that the open space is for everyone. If you look out the window from
the inside, you can see the Cathedral of Learning. If you look in the window
from outside, you can see a woman sitting in an empty room finally at peace.
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Madison Jones
Grade 10
Mt. Lebanon High School
The Brave Boy
(Fiction)
The ocean never failed to hypnotize me into its unpredictable waters. When I
was alone in the water, the ever present ocean was my blanket, enveloping me in
the rhythm of its waves forever. Eventually, my parents always called me back to
shore with them. Of course, I ignored them the first hundred times, but by then
my father would stomp into the water, laughing and splashing me until he drove
me back onto the shore. My mother joined us and splashed him in my defense,
sunlight pouring out of her smile and blue sea glass twinkling in her eyes.
Eventually, my dad stopped joining me every morning, but my mom occasionally
splashed with me, her sunshine smile making a special appearance as
she whispered about me becoming such a brave son.
An early October morning, when the water cooled down enough to make
even the Atlantic’s most devoted swimmers shiver, I watched my father disappear
into the waves from my balcony. He ventured far into the ocean, his black hair
morphing into the sea. My lungs filled with salty air as I breathed in the morning.
Despite the bite of the cool air, a need to feel the certainty of the ocean’s
waves bobbing beneath me burned in my chest. When I gazed back out at my
father floating in the dark water, something prevented me from running down
into the sea. When I was alone in the water, I became another wave crashing
with the others. I wondered if my father felt the same.
Moments later, my father left the waves behind, shaking the water out
of his long hair. Once on the shore, he looked back at the waves, which were
tumultuously bubbling with anger like soldiers preparing for battle. He paused
for a brief eternity, inhaling the briny air before grabbing a towel and getting
into his car. To the store? I wondered before heading back into the house to help
my mother. That night, once the moon reflected off of the ocean and headlights
had not yet shone through the windows, my mother began to pace. Neither of
us spoke. The silence echoed.
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Weeks later, our house felt like an empty shell. My mother and I avoided
each other, slinking around our house like shadows. We suffocated in stillness.
In those weeks, I decided the ocean, a cold stranger, was to blame for not
captivating my father enough to stay. Every time I glimpsed it through my
bedroom window, I cursed the sea for allowing my mother, whose eyes sparkled,
and myself, the brave boy, to be left behind.
One morning, after glaring at the ocean through my window, I slowly
walked to the back door. With each step, the ocean pulled me closer. I waded
into the freezing October water, the temperature shocking my legs. I took a
few more hesitant steps into the frigid water, until I finally held my breath and
plunged underwater.
The water crashed over me, waking up every one of my senses. My nose
stung with the arctic water, my eyes burned with salt, and my skin was rubbed
raw by the piercing cold. As I succumbed to numbness, I transformed into one
of the waves. I rocked with the ocean, surrendering to its uncontrollable waters.
After a moment of being tossed around in the chaos of the waves, I stood up, my
head shattering the surface of the ocean like glass. I sharply inhaled before walking
back to my house and leaving the dark uncertainty of the water behind me.
Short Prose
103

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Nisha Rao
Grade 11
North Allegheny Senior High School
Growing Up Feminist
(Non-Fiction)
Summertime hung in the air, thick and foggy, putting the suburbia to sleep
with every slow, sweeping warm breeze. Through our open windows, I saw my
neighbor, asleep, perched on a bright green lawn chair in his driveway and hordes
of dog-walkers, all waving and smiling to one another. The sun had travelled
to its halfway point in the sky, blinding everybody on my quaint cul-de-sac.
Inside our home, my mother and father placed the evening’s meal on the
table with bright, shining faces as they enjoyed the sultry carelessness of the
summer evening. My mother insisted we eat together every night, no matter
what. For seventeen years, through hell or high water, I had sat down at that
kitchen table. Some nights, the conversation lit up the room, with passion and
love and energy, while, at others, we fell silent, allowing the crickets to fill up
the empty spaces. Tonight, we sat down with ease, allowing tales of our days
to bubble out and touch one another. Soon enough, the bowls on the table had
been emptied and our stomachs filled to the brim. “I have a story to tell,” My
mother announced, with a certain glimmer in her eye, until we looked towards
her expectantly.
Her story, similar to many, takes place during a childhood trip to my
grandparents’ home in India. If American summertime brought the lazy, restful
respite from reality, Indian summertime was the antithesis. Thick pockets of
heat, dissolving in the dusty smog and animal feces that covered every street,
permeated every inch of the country. If that was not enough, I felt foreign in a
place where I should feel completely at home. My voice instantly changed the
way people looked at me, as though my Indian heritage was washed away by
my American-ness. Even relatives whom I barely recognized built walls around
themselves, cutting off any means of interaction. As I grew older, India became
even more foreign to me than it had once been. But, my mother’s story takes
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place in my earlier, much happier memories of India, at the tender, naive age
of five.
She describes a scene all too familiar to me. Four members of my family
crammed into the small, stifling kitchen space, with the stovetop blazing away.
We eat our lunch together, talking rapidly and laughing loudly amongst ourselves.
Even at a young age, I realized the change in family dynamics. At home,
my mother and father played the parts of equals. They both provided for the
family, they both helped around the home, and they made certain my brother
and I were offered every opportunity to succeed in the same manner. In India,
my mother often stood by my grandmother as we ate. She ate after everybody
else had been fed. She was expected to bring out the tea and make the food.
She emulated tradition to its greatest and most extreme extent.
In the kitchen, a male relative hands my mother his dirty plate to put into
the sink. She obliges, as tradition dictates. And, to my mother’s joy, my five
year old self asked him why he couldn’t put the plate away? My mother laughed as
she envisions a small, scrawny girl scolding a grown man. But, the event itself
occurred with little pomp or circumstance. It was a childish musing from a girl
whose voice carried very little weight in the grand scheme of the family.
But, the story itself, or, perhaps, the everlasting memory of it in my mother’s
mind struck a chord with me. The ubiquitous nature of these stringent family
dynamics gripped me, and, for whatever reason, would never leave me. Everywhere
we went, every Indian household we visited, every family member we saw,
every friend we stayed with, an unbalanced show of inequity against women
prevailed. It seemed wholly unfair that so many women, in India and America
combined, had every type of shackle placed upon them when I lived so freely.
For this reason, I have always declared myself a feminist.
This declaration came about not due to any decision I had made, but entirely
due to the actions of the world around me. We live in a world women are consistently
held to a higher standard than men, consistently taunted and betrayed for
ideals we are forced to comply with, and pitted against one another, as though
we stand opposite one another, battling to the death in the Colosseum. The
idea of women gaining a level of autonomy beyond that already awarded to us
seems foreign to most, especially those who seek to qualm the rights we already
possess. It is with this ideal that I find myself in deep debt to the women who
came before me. People, such as my mother and grandmother, who bared the
brunt of the inequity with a poise and grace that I will never understand, inspire
me. Their incredible bravery in the face of obvious ignorance deems them the
strongest people I could ever know.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
My Indian experience, so often clouded by the smog and the inequities
of tradition, lasted for several weeks, every couple of years. For many women,
it lasts a lifetime. A demon stands on their shoulder, as life makes them feel
jaded and insecure with themselves. They resign themselves to the second class
citizens that society has made them out to be, as they know no other reality.
But, a new group of young, tenacious women emerge every day. They, with the
power of the knowledge they possess, take on the world in their own, unique
way to battle those would choose to take their civil rights away from them.
They fight the battles necessary to win the war because they understand that
life should not be this way. They truly and wholly believe in a cause that can
and will change the world we live in.
And, their presence could just take the form of a naive, tender five year old.
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Noor El-Dehaibi
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Short Prose
Matt
(Non-Fiction)
1.
I’m running out of people who know what my dad’s real name is. He has
introduced himself as “Matt Dehaibi” for years—a name that plasters every
name tag, every corporate gift, every card that he receives for holidays that he
has never celebrated.
2.
A few years after he begins calling himself Matt, he meets someone at the
Cracker Barrel where he works. Her name is Wendy. The only things that I
know about her, eight months into their relationship, are that 1) she is a white
woman, 2) she is from rural Pennsylvania and 3) judging from the gifts that she
sends us from the Cracker Barrel store room, she loves kitsch above all else. I,
personally, see no other traits in her.
Behind his back, I laugh with my sisters about the ceramic salt and pepper
shakers she fawns over, but outwardly I show enthusiasm, at least partially
happy for the first serious relationship he has been in since his second divorce
with my mother. Time goes by. He moves in with her, but keeps the lease on
a month-by-month basis. He thinks of proposing to her. He decides not to.
3.
My father lives his Lebanese life in Lebanon and his American life in America.
He takes solo trips to visit my grandparents and to work their family farm. He
brings us gallons of fresh honey, sweeter than any I have ever tasted. Wendy
asks to meet his parents. He finds a way around it.
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I would feel guilty for her, but he made the same promise to my mother,
which is still unfulfilled. I, along with my sisters, have never met my grandparents.
We know to not blame him for this, but privately do so anyway.
4.
Even with his American name, his American company, and his American
girlfriend, my dad can’t escape his feeling of otherness. It builds up under the
floorboards, around jars of tahini, between the toy camels that his co-workers
give him for Christmas. (A tradition that none of us understand, but we all
pretend that we are fine with.) He puts forth a type of exhausted gratitude,
another thing I cannot understand. In his ambition, he has grown thicker skin
than I could.
5.
After ringing up a quilt incorrectly, my dad loses his American job. The unemployment
he collects is filed under official documentation—he is filled to a
precise Maamoun Hafiz El-Dehaibi. His relationship with Wendy cracks under
money problems. He calls her a bitch when out of her sight. I know I cannot
let him know that I agree with him.
6.
My dad puts his toy camels in a box and leaves them in my mom’s house. She
refuses them on principle, but he does not take them back. They sit in our
living room for months. I feel sulfur rise off of them as if they are festering, or
rotting, or simply poisoning the air I breathe. I avoid them whenever possible.
7.
My dad comes over one night, complaining that Wendy sent him mail with a
snake stamp. He only sees malice on the envelope. I can’t bear to listen, to hear
a grown man go on about stamps. He leaves a few hours later, still upset.
8.
With the air of loss and frustration still heavy in the air, I open up the camel
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ox. They are mostly pulled out of nativity sets that one could have had around
the house. One of the camels is beautiful, leather-wrapped with the signatures
of his bosses under its belly. I turn it around in my hands. Someone took effort
to create it, to buy it, to gift it. To tell my father that this is what he was known
as, what he was seen as. That this was all that he was and all he would ever be.
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9.
I take a kitchen knife to the camel, cutting at its seams, feeling sand pour out.
The irony only provokes me further. I try to pull its ugly head off, to break its
wooden frame. I turn it over in my hands, disgusted at it and myself and my
dad for even receiving it with an ounce of grace. I realize that he has to receive
it with grace. I realize that even this grace wasn’t enough to tether his life to
one job, to one person, to one single piece of his American self.
I think about calling my dad and telling him what I did, but I don’t want
him to be embarrassed by me. I throw the skinned camel directly into the trash,
along with two of the uglier plastic ones. He doesn’t notice (or does not tell me
that he did), and I am grateful.
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Qingqing Zhao
Grade 10
Shady Side Academy
Breakfast with Strangers
(Fiction)
Danielle only tells lies on the train. Well, that’s not completely true. She has
called in sick to work many times when she felt perfectly fine. She has complimented
dresses she found hideous, has told Starbuck baristas that her name
was Annie, Elena, Ivy, or whoever she was feeling that day. She has hedged a
little here, hemmed a little there, has tucked and nipped the truth whenever the
occasion called for it. In short, she tells just as many little white and pasty pastel
lies as anyone else. However, her extravagant, calculated lies, her intricately
woven gold-tasseled Persian carpet lies, she saves for the train.
The train Danielle always lies on is Amtrak’s Acela Express, which departs
from New York City’s Penn Station every day at 12:55 PM and arrives in Baltimore,
Maryland two days later. She only takes the Acela Express to Thurmont,
Maryland to spend five days of Christmas with her family. She’s done this every
year for the past 13 years, ever since her college days at New York University.
The annual trips Danielle takes to visit her family are completely uneventful
and she spends most of it in the observation carriage. Year to year, she watches
what little color there is in the bleak desolate winter drain away into the chill
blue twilight. The shape of the world is lost temporarily until the Christmas
clad houses light up the darkened sky and lick past the speeding train. Danielle
thinks about these other alien lives as they jaunt by and it helps her unspool
the coil of her stressful city life. She rewinds herself along with the landscape
through the observation carriage window, as city soon becomes suburb, which
shortly becomes farmland.
As a struggling actress in the Big Apple, Danielle dreams of starring on
Broadway one day. She moved to NYC straight out of high school to pursue
her dreams of becoming the next Barbra Streisand to the dismay of her parents.
They wanted her to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, anything but an
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actress. But, Danielle wouldn’t listen, insisting that she’ll someday make a name
for herself in the city that never sleeps. Upon graduating from NYU, Danielle
soon learned that making a name for herself wasn’t as easy as it seemed.
Danielle must have gone on hundreds of casting calls before finally landing
a minor role in Wicked as a choir member. Sure, it wasn’t on Broadway, but
it was a start. In between casting calls and rehearsals, Danielle worked two
part-time jobs just to pay her bills. After all, she didn’t go into acting for the
money. She pursued it as a career because she loved everything about it—she
loved embodying new characters, trying their lives on for size, and creating life
from words on a page. Some say that acting is the purest form of lying, but
Danielle doesn’t think so. She views acting as simply a temporary pause from
reality. Through acting, she could control how other people perceive her, as
opposed to her life at home.
In the little town where Danielle grew up, her life up to the age of eighteen
was an open book with which everyone has already read. It’s the type of town
where everybody knows everybody and gossip travels faster than the speed of
light—faster than social media anyway. Everyone knew that her brother’s friends
once accidentally set her hair on fire in a tease gone awry. They knew that she
once wanted to be an astronaut and drove her teachers crazy by speckling stars
over everything she wrote. They knew the names of every boy she’s ever kissed
from junior high to senior prom. These memories are alive as yesterday, both
for Danielle and everyone in her hometown. In the five days she’s home every
year, Danielle would be asked at least twice how much weight she’s lost since last
year, five or six times if she finally got her big break on Broadway, and twenty
five times, once for each person she happens to meet, if she has seen Bradley
Hanawalt lately.
Danielle would oblige them with smiles, putting her old self back on like the
sweaters she only ever wears at home. Although she is an actress, she is amazed
at her ability to do this when she herself cannot remember what sparked those
celestial ambitions or what on earth she had ever seen in Bradley Hanawalt, that
cheating bastard. That Danielle, so familiar to her parents and their friends,
was a stranger to her—a role she is not comfortable in playing. She supposed
she could give them something new to remember instead. She could dye her
hair pink or pierce her nose. Then, perhaps the months she’d spent, singed and
seething when she was eleven would be forgotten. Either way, she would come
home a tourist, on vacation from herself.
It is the return trip that Danielle always looks forward to. Heading back
to New York, she boards the 10:25 AM train in Baltimore, and scrambles for a
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place at the last breakfast seating. When you travel alone, as Danielle does, you
do not eat alone. You are seated with another party, sometimes two. You have
breakfast with strangers and here, at last, is a chance to peek inside the windows
that go flashing by and have one last moment of solitude before returning back
to your usual stressful routine. The most normal Midwestern looking couple,
he in a patchwork sweater, she in something vintage with hearts, will tell you
about their son who is an Iceberg Mover. Yes, that is an actual profession. A
grandmother with a purse full of yarn will tell you how she hitchhiked on
motorcycles through Thailand thirty years ago. Another couple will tell you the
intricate tale of how they met during a high school production of Our Town.
He played the Stage Manager; she was the stage manager. Danielle would take
away from these breakfasts vivid sketches of foreign territories and interesting
characters. This is where the lying comes in.
The lying started after Danielle’s second annual trip to visit her family
during the holidays. She was only a sophomore in college and her trip home had
been unpleasant to say the least. Her parents had just found out that Danielle
had declared “Acting” as her official major in school and were doing everything
in their power to talk Danielle out of it.
“Why on earth would you want to be an actress?” Danielle’s mother asked,
“It doesn’t pay the bills and you’ll constantly be struggling to find paying jobs.
Is that the way you want to live?”
“Come on, Mom! I love acting,” Danielle expressed. “Don’t you want me to
do something I love for the rest of my life?”
“Passion is one thing, but building a successful career off it is another,”
Danielle’s father said. “You also like math and economics—why can’t you pursue
a career as an Investment Banker? NYU has a phenomenal business school and
New York is the finance capital of the world.”
“New York’s also the “acting” capital of the world, Dad. It’s where Broadway
is—you know I’ve always wanted to have a shot at performing on Broadway!
Why can’t you guys just support my dreams for once? I’ve always done what
you have expected me to do! I got good grades, never missed a single curfew,
never as much told a single white lie about where I was or who I was with, and
check in with you guys every week when I’m at college! I just want to do this
one thing for myself.”
“Honey, we just want the best for you,” Danielle’s mother said. “You’re still
young and don’t know how hard it is surviving as an actress in New York City.
We don’t want you looking back at your life 10 years from now and thinking
about what a wrong choice you made.”
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“But, I’m not—“
“Discussion’s over, Danielle,” Danielle’s father said. “First thing when you
get back to school, you are changing your major to finance. Or if you’re adamantly
against finance, pre-med and chemical engineering are also acceptable.
You’ve always been good at math and science.”
And just like that, Danielle knew that no matter what else she said, her
parents have made up their minds. On her trip back to college that year, Danielle
dreaded making the trip to her advisor’s office early Monday morning to change
her major. She would do anything to not think about her impending change
in career paths, but she could not stop the conversation that she had with her
parents from replaying in her mind. That was until she began a conversation
with a pair of strangers she met at the breakfast table.
One morning, during the initial orange juice pouring of breakfast, she was
asked if she was coming from visiting family for Christmas. Danielle opened
her mouth and began to say yes she was, but she abruptly stopped herself. Why
should she let these strangers have a front row seat to her personal life? Surely,
after she said “Yes,” they would ask her where she was going, what she was
studying at NYU, what she aspired to do after college, etc. Why should she
give them an opportunity to judge her for wanting to become an actress? Why
should she look into their eyes and see the same levels of confusion and pity
she saw in her parents’ expressions just the night before? No, she wouldn’t give
them the opportunity to judge her. They’re just strangers after all.
“No,” Danielle finally blurted out, “I’m Jewish.”
“Oh,” said the woman genuinely abashed, “Of course we shouldn’t assume.”
Danielle felt an instant contrition, but feared that admitting the truth now
would be embarrassing for them both.
“Don’t worry about it,” Danielle said, “I was visiting my aunt who’s sick.”
Feeling the need to embellish a little more, she tossed out, “It’s my favorite aunt
Melissa. I’m actually named after her.”
“I thought you said your name was Danielle?” asked the man. She’d forgotten
they’d already introduced themselves.
“It is Danielle,” she said. “Actually it’s Melissa Danielle, but I go by Danielle.
It’s a long story.” Which of course they wanted to hear. After a little prompting,
she’d plunged on, making it up, every word, on the spot.
“You see my mother is Jewish, but my father is Irish. That tells you for
starters how not really Jewish my mother is, which is also why she named me
after her sister. It’s considered bad luck to name a child after someone still alive
both for the child and the person they’re named after. My grandmother was
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horrified, if it was possible for her to be more horrified by my mother. Anyways,
my grandmother scared me when I was little, and so I’ve always gone by my
middle name because of bad memories of my grandmother screaming my first
name growing up. Now I feel more like a Danielle than a Melissa. I can’t even
remember what it was like to be a Melissa.” Back at last on the solid ground
of truth.
Everything else Danielle said at breakfast that morning was more or less
true. She had to edit a few things to keep continuity with her adopted faith.
But, that just made her feel more present, leaning into the conversation on her
toes. It was like rock climbing, she thought, or how she imagined rock climbing
would be, constantly on the lookout for good handholds, wary of places she
might lose her footing, regularly testing her safety line. Furthermore, when
breakfast ended and Danielle said goodbye, she felt as if she were sending this
couple off with a more colorful picture of Danielle, like a gold and silver paper
sailboat launched into the river, headed for the sea.
After breakfast that morning, when Danielle finally came back down to
reality, she decided to not change her major after all. Truthfully, nothing has
made Danielle feel more alive than acting, and she didn’t want to go back to
being the girl her parents and everyone else always expected her to be. She
wanted to control how everyone sees her and not be read like an open book.
After she arrived back in college that year, she called her parents and told them
that she changed her major to Finance. She had a couple of friends in the Stern
School of Business and figured she could rely on them to help her keep up the
ruse.
The following year, Danielle set out to lie from the beginning, though she
did not think of it as lying. She was an inventor, a conjurer of other Danielles,
and like all magicians, she had a strict code of rules. She did not lie about
things she had no knowledge of. She never repeated a lie. She never made them
outrageous or fantastical. She never made real people a part of her lie. She never
knew when someone would turn out to know someone else. And above all else,
Danielle wanted to not get caught in a lie. Not at the breakfast table, not in
retrospect when her companions thought about it later, not years down the line,
not ever. She wanted immortality for all the other selves she created. All her
paper sailboats must reach the sea.
Her parents were also none the wiser about her fake major change. Danielle
told them that she spent the past summer interning at JP Morgan as an Investment
Banking Analyst, and they spent the entire holiday break bragging to their
friends about their business-savvy daughter, “the banker.” In reality, Danielle
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spent the entire summer at her two part-time jobs, trying to get enough money
to keep her bills paid while going on numerous casting calls, but she never told
her parents that. She told her parents exactly what they wanted to hear and they
couldn’t be happier, just like what Danielle wanted.
Over the years, Danielle had been a Republican mother of triplets on her
first trip away from her children. That Danielle had also been allergic to every
kind of nut and was a finicky, fastidious eater. She had been a Danielle who was
an only child and an amateur painter. She had been an avid gardener, a snake
milker, a sous chef, and a dog-food taster. Lying Danielle was nothing if not a
generous conversationalist. She did not want to hold court at the breakfast table,
casting out her whole story at once like a far-flung hook, line and sinker. Her
companions were not fish to be reeled in; they were pomegranates and olives.
Her lie must come out naturally, a careful scattering of seeds in receptive soil.
This year, Danielle is seated with a guy who looks like a freshman in college
and a middle-aged woman in a business suit who is typing away on her computer
as if her life depended on it. Danielle imagined that her life would probably
be like the woman’s if she went down the finance track, and she was suddenly
grateful she hadn’t. To this day, Danielle’s parents still believe that Danielle
had switched her major in college and is now working as a buy-side analyst at
a hedge fund in New York City.
Over the years, Danielle has found that keeping up with her lies around
her parents has gotten easier, considering that they don’t ask as many questions
about her life as they used to. However, at the same time, Danielle feels as
though lying has lost its edge the easier it gets. Once again, Danielle feels like
an observer in her own life and she is determined to do whatever it takes to feel
present again, even if it means breaking one or two of her well established rules.
“So, where are you heading?” Danielle asks the guy sitting across from her.
“Columbia University,” the guy responds, shifting his gaze suddenly and
staring at the ground.
“Oh, that’s cool,” Danielle says, not thinking anything unusual about the
guy’s behavior. She’s met plenty of shy guys before. They’re much harder to
lie to in Danielle’s opinion because they don’t ask too many questions, so you
don’t really know what they’re thinking. But Danielle always likes a challenge.
“I went to Julliard,” Danielle continues, making up facts about herself as she
goes along, “Piano major. I’m actually playing at Carnegie Hall next weekend.
So, what are you studying?”
The guy looks at Danielle for a moment and furrows his brows in confusion
before responding, “I’m uhhh majoring in economics.”
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Danielle, having not noticed the guy’s facial expression, says, “Wow, that’s
great! I bet your parents really like that. Unfortunately, my parents passed away
when I was 8 years old, but my dad always told me to follow my dreams in music.
You see he was also a pianist.”
At this the guy spoke up, “I’m sorry, but didn’t you used to date my brother?
I wasn’t sure at first, but now I’m pretty certain. I never forget a face, especially
one that’s been all over my brother’s.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re mistaken,” Danielle laughs. “How could I possibly
have dated your brother? I don’t even know you.”
“I’m Jared,” the guy responds. “Jared Hanawalt? My brother is Bradley
Hanawalt. I’m pretty sure you guys used to date in high school.”
Danielle suddenly turned pale. Of course. She remembers Bradley’s brother,
the kid who was practically in diapers the first time they met. Now, he’s heading
off to college and he knows her secret.
Danielle opens her mouth to speak, but Jared beats her to it.
“I knew it!” Jared exclaims, “You are Danielle. You said you went to Julliard?
I thought your parents said you went to NYU and became a successful banker
or something?”
“I . . . I,” Danielle says, but she cannot finish her thought. She has finally
been caught in a lie.
“I did go to NYU,” Danielle finally says in a desperate attempt to keep her
lie afloat, “for undergrad! I went to Julliard for grad school when I discovered
piano was my one true calling.”
“Hmm . . .” Jared shifts his eyes and ponders this for a moment. “That’s
not what your parents told my parents. Your parents said that after NYU, you
started working full-time right away.”
“Well, that’s not accurate,” Danielle counters. “I’m currently a piano grad
student at Julliard. I don’t care if you believe me or not. Now, if you don’t mind, I
have a lot of work I have to do before I arrive in New York, so I’ll see you around.”
As Danielle is getting up to leave, Jared says, “Prove it. Prove that you’re
a student at Julliard. You also said you are performing at Carnegie Hall next
weekend? Prove that too and I’ll believe you and won’t tell your parents that
you’ve been lying to them all along.”
At this, Danielle falters. She has no proof. She has never had to prove one
of her lies before. Strangers don’t need proof, but Jared isn’t a stranger. He’s
someone who can blow Danielle’s cover in a matter of seconds. She knew he
would do it—he was infamously known as the “tattletale” in her hometown.
“Whatever,” Danielle mutters. “I don’t have to prove anything to you.”
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Danielle quickly returns to her seat on the train and fishes out her cell phone
with tears brimming in her eyes. It’s finally time to tell the truth before Jared
beats her to it. He’s probably calling his parents right now with the juicy details.
With shaking fingers, Danielle dials her mother’s number. Her heart beats
in time with the ringing of the cell phone.
“Hello?” Danielle’s mom answers the phone. “Danielle? Is everything
alright?”
“Mom . . . ” Danielle says with a trembling voice, “I have to tell you
something.”
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Serena Zets
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Frida
(Non-Fiction)
They say that women fall in love between their ears. I fear that one day I will
succumb to the voices that crack hey baby. I fear that I’ll accept rape culture as
romance or lose myself in the process. I want to yell at these shadowed figures,
just to hear my own voice again.
I used to dress for myself. I wore shorts that stopped before my fingertips
and shirts whose necklines hit below my collarbones. Now, I dress for battle.
I wear turtlenecks that cover my chest in a swath of fabric and combat boots
whose heels craft a cadence as I walk. We’re in a societal war against women,
and I am a soldier.
I wish things didn’t have to be this way. I wish that my biggest fear was
nuclear war or the apocalypse. Instead, I’m terrified of walking home alone at
night. When I make my evening commute, I suffocate under my winter coat.
My hands peek out of the sleeves, curled fists, clenched keys; my Frida Kahlo
key chain rests against my fingers and jingles as I walk.
On these dark nights, I look to my hands as they cradle Frida. Her smirk
dazzles me as I grip her in my palm. Flowers form a crown on her scalp and her
lips curl into a grin. She is reassuring. She reminds me that there is so much
more than this current moment. There is art, travel, love, and somewhere out
there, there is me.
When I traveled to Lima, I saw Frida’s visage everywhere. She gleamed up at
me from the remnants bin in the corner of a thrift store. Her image captivated
me so much that despite my dwindling travel budget, I bought the keychain.
Later that day, I stumbled upon a mural of her in an alley. Lima’s arts district,
Barranco, contained alleyways decorated with the most beautiful art I’ve ever
seen. Murals of Frida were intertwined with images of psychedelic cats and
vivid self-portraits. It could have been easy for her image to be lost amongst
the chaos but her thick unibrow was undeniable. While she was ever-present,
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she was tucked out of sight; I was the only person to see her in such a way. My
encounters with her made it seem as though she’d been forgotten by the city
and its people. Maybe, I was meant to find her.
That day in Lima was the first in a long time where I wasn’t scared to be by
myself. I found that I felt most secure while lost in a city of millions. I conquered
my fear and wandered the city alone. I was assured by the countless strangers
bustling around me that I’d be okay. Their warm bodies created a buffer from
danger. And I didn’t find their lingering stares to be threatening. Instead, I
welcomed them. I found myself in the sea glass strewn along the beach, the
guitarists who crooned around the city, and the portico walkways—remnants
of the city’s colonial history. I danced along with the musicians, my hips swaying.
For the first time, I didn’t care what I was wearing, and I didn’t care who
watched.
I lost my Frida a couple of weeks ago. That night, I solemnly walked home
in the dark with my hand clasped around my phone instead of my keys. I felt
more on edge than I had in the past. By the time I reached my doorstep my
heart was racing, but I had made it home safely.
Later that night, I rummaged through my backpack before I went to bed.
I found the keychain at the very bottom. She had been watching over me the
whole time.
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Tess Buchanan
Grade 11
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Mother Earth: A Bird’s End
(Fiction)
1. The Siesta
You kicked her while she slept. You kicked her earth, water, and sky. You kicked
her until the skies were the color of the red land and the blood beneath your
skin. She was tired, slept through the last ice age and never woke. You got used
to the idea of a life, a world, without her. You kicked and kicked and what your
foot used to pass through is sold, reforming.
Her dreams are full of vengeance. When you dream, you can’t tell your sleep
is ending until it ends. In her dreams, she knows. She dreams of drowning but
the closer the brown water gets to her lips the more defiant she is. Her collarbones,
her chin, lower lip, nose, she blinks. She is submerged. A heartbeat, a
breath, and she screams, bubbles erupting from her lungs and her mouth never
looked so beautiful. She isn’t drowning. She can’t. Her fingers and palms reach
to the surface of the water and they’re blue, not from cold but from life. You
kick her once more.
2. The Mezzanine
Life bursts open from behind her closed eyes. Light is rampant in her head but
she lives in a bubble. The outside world is silent. She finds peace in transition.
Her defiance is channeled through smiles. Her vengeance is channeled through
laughter. She is the birds and your calls awoke her. The earth was red, her hair
was red, her feathers are red, her beak is sharp.
3. The Wake
She sleeps beside the snow goose. When she wakes the geese murmur, flutter,
restless. She hushes them and their beady eyes close. She consumes their fear
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and feeds it to you. There are circles under her eyes even though life enthralls
her, she didn’t want to come back again. She hops on the ripples you made,
across the coast with great blue herons trailing her. Her legs are slender like the
heron’s. Her laugh is sad. She hops and trips and tumbles and rolls and laughs
and the herons cry. She runs to embrace them but the more she laughs the more
they cry—suddenly they understand why she’s here.
She crafts their wings into a pair of her own. Her feathers shimmer like
the thin layer of sleek air covering the earth. Her wings are chestnut gold and
connect the sea to the sky. Her cheeks are blue. This is her migration, resurrection,
the end of a life beginning. She uses every pulse of blood in her body to
spread her wings over you. She reaches up and her bones snap and the sky’s red
fades back to a blue. She throws every pinch of her life into the ocean and onto
the land and beneath the Earth’s surface. She cracks the neglected world you
made for yourself and its natural state is returned, but she collapses when she
is done. She nosedives, spiraling to the ocean and spiraling underwater. When
her beak touches the sand at the ocean’s floor, she crashes right through. The
earth shatters on impact.
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Will Thayer
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
The End of the World Circus
Is Going Great!
(Fiction)
The President of the United States of America already had one foot in the
grave so he really didn’t care when the seven seas evaporated into nothing.
Children were already throwing pool parties in rivers littered with trash-gyres
that spat up everything from a flat screen television to a pair of rusted dentures.
There were community gardens on mass graves in the Mid-West, California had
been reclaimed by a real tenacious band of starfish and Pennsylvania became so
overmined it folded in on itself like tasteless origami.
A state-wide apocalypse had never been a question of if, only when. Just
as in true American fashion, when the extinction of the human race was so
apparent it could not be denied, they threw a government-sanctioned party!
The guys upstairs put a lot of effort into covering this stuff up, so when the
ocean disappeared they seized the opportunity to relax and set up shop deep in
the Mariana Trench.
By now the circus is going great! People are renting palanquins and realizing
dreams of falconry. Kettle corn is being eaten like that organic shit and
those granola eaters are being stoned to death for their annoying little politics.
There are Ouija boards, freakshows, chicken-on-a-sticks, anesthesiologists,
firing squads, elephants, flaming hula-hoops, fishbones—the works!
But at night when everybody is asleep outside on the sand, the trench
likes to remind itself that the world really is ending. It’s an apocalypse sky,
chutes-and-ladders landscape: skeletal coral; chalk and apricot cliffsides; shallow
water-filled declivities scummed with algae lime and gold and black. A father
remarks on how he feels like Jonah inside the whale. His children don’t know
what he means but his wife knows exactly: this great beast has swallowed him
whole and is beginning to pull him under. He feels like scrimshaw in his own
life.
The circus is just preparation for the afterlife. Having everybody in one
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place makes Death’s job a little easier. And even though everybody at the circus
knows that their lives are ending soon, nobody feels scared. Because facing your
own death isn’t terrifying; it’s remembering that you have a life to lose that is.
Because the apocalypse doesn’t exist in the huge tower of bodies that sizzles
next to the menagerie tent. There’s no horror in the constant evaporation, or
the way cotton candy dissolves into vapor after you bite it. The apocalypse lives
in the big top, under the tarps. It coagulates in pots of kettle corn and tastes
like caramel. Every time somebody looks into the great infinity of the zebra’s
stripes and forgets, just for a moment, the world ends all over again. Denial is
only a bandage because calamity lives in the spaces in between. So when a little
girl sits and waits for her parents to pick her up from the House of Mirrors, she
looks inside and thinks she’s seen a ghost; perhaps she has.
Short Prose
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Poetry
First Place
“Future’s Spark”
by Marissa Randall
Second Place
“The Extinction of a Body”
by Ilan Magnani

Marissa Randall
Grade 12
Barack Obama Academy of International Studies
Poetry
Future’s Spark
Instead of crying about it,
I’ma just make art.
I’ma just be smart.
I’ma count my blessings like Noah’s Ark.
I can see the cracks and my heart is broken, but
I’ma bounce back.
I’ma just make art.
I’ma lead the way.
I’ma count my sheep and save the day.
But, I won’t rest—don’t get confused—no sleep here.
Don’t have time to lose.
Wanna scream—just wanna run so fast, quick as a light beam.
I need to cling to my dream.
So more can believe, so more can achieve.
So more can reach goals their Mothers and Fathers couldn’t see.
Blinded by the pain.
Blinded by the want to go insane.
Instead of crying about it,
I’ma just make art.
I’ma just be smart.
I’ma count my blessings like Noah’s Ark.
I see the vision, I see myself on television.
Extra precision.
Listen—I see the green room—the pictures on the wall.
Nice islands, big beaches.
I can have it all.
To share it with my people and make success equal.
You never know if there will be a sequel.
Sharing is caring. How you think we made it here, my people?
I can write and dream and think and believe.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Be the voice for people who cannot speak.
Mouths closed. Eyes wide shut.
Hiding behind others’ perception of oneself.
Their vision alluded.
Persecuted by the goals their Mothers and Fathers couldn’t see, couldn’t reach
and couldn’t be.
Why cry about it?
Just be smart.
Just make art.
Count your blessings like Noah, with his Ark.
Self-love is more than loving yourself, it’s mental wealth, it’s mental health.
It’s knowing when you’re wrong.
Mature, be strong.
Fix it or you’ll be hearing the same old song.
Or tune in to me, tune into us musical beings.
Wipe the fog from your glasses, peep the blinds—go look and see.
You see the gold crack through the clouds?
You see the green crack from the ground?
That’s wealth being spread.
Now look, see yourself in the reflection of the mirror.
You see who you are?
Is it a little bit clearer?
Why cry when you can make art?
Why shed a tear when you can be smart?
Go ‘head.
Count your blessings like Noah’s Ark.
Count on us—captains of our own ship—Future’s Spark.
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Ilan Magnani
Grade 10
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Poetry
The Extinction of a Body
The hair falls first,
sinks into barbershop trenches.
Later, the legs,
harvested. Covered in concrete
khakis. The chin and cheeks,
overgrown with thorns and moss.
Uninhabitable. The larynx, heavy
with gravel. I search ponds
for fish that change
their sexes, for lost body parts
and sequins. I find emblems
of what’s left; discarded tutus,
like my eyes, wide and alive.
Feathered with frills, I tell my reflection
in the water, I will infest this new body,
make it mine. I resuscitate lipstick tubes
fossilized in my mother’s old
makeup bag. I nearly paint myself back
to life, a species halfway
rediscovered. I photograph myself
to save what still lives here,
to conserve sections still breathing,
twirling with life, not yet fully gone.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Aaliyah Thomas
Grade 10
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Coffin Birth
She sat by twenty brass hair pins,
her fingers scraping against the surface,
her eyes staring down at twenty little ants
nipping at her ankle skin,
blue blood knocking against ivory touches.
Crumbs of Gerber cereal pieces,
that were never cleaned up attracted them,
she wished it bothered her.
She sat in a dim lit room,
twenty men in the next room over
smoking twenty heavy cigars and
twenty pounds of smoke filling her house.
She couldn’t remember what she was doing there.
How long had she been there?
She was too focused on distant images
propped up on the window sill.
An ultrasound picture illuminating
from the sun peeking in the room.
A pink crib sat across from her,
sheets thrown over the railing,
the soft melody of the mobile
a distant sound now.
Twenty cans of formula were stacked
on a changing table.
The drawers below full of baby clothes
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Poetry
and below that was binkies and rattle toys,
they’d all go unused.
Her lips were sealed with a slip of saliva,
a stamp on her cheek,
a sincerely tattooed on her skin,
tears were the letters to a family not too far away.
Her mother was devastated but her
pain was mere teething pains compared to her own.
The feeling of death,
suffocating, an umbilical cord around the neck.
She leaned back against a floral wallpaper,
pretty little lambs with pink ribbons
jumping at her.
She wondered if her husband would take a break
from fake pigeon friends.
Trying to drown himself
under the travesty that rocked his life.
She closed her eyes for a moment,
pressing her hand against her stomach
and let out a little sob.
She yearned for kicks to bring back her life,
for tiny toes to stick from stretched skin.
All she’d get was a death certificate and a marriage that’d never be the same.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Alex Flagg
Grade 11
North Allegheny Senior High School
A Familial Disconnect
Spring training:
My family, huddled around the TV.
I feel
transported,
like it’s 1952 and they’re listening to some old radio program and for just a second,
they all get along.
The Pirates are winning and they’re laughing and mom comes in with drinks and I
half expect Ovaltine but it’s pop and they’re cheering
and they’re together.
If you asked me to name one player,
I wouldn’t be able;
I never could understand baseball.
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Amanda Wolf
Grade 11
Mt. Lebanon High School
Poetry
Three’s Company
The stall door
struggles to support my forehead
Crooked tile under my feet
clings to stray hairs or scraps of paper and
The dried leaves carried in under countless dirty shoes
look much less natural
when I examine them with withered eyes
Girl in the stall to the right
shoves willowy fingers down her throat,
heaves the bitter remnants of her last meal
into the dirty toilet
I imagine walking behind her,
holding back her twig-like
bleach-blonde hair,
helping her clean up her shame.
I consider it
but my roots have begun to solidify under
the cracked tile floor
There would be no point.
I would just embarrass her anyway.
I can hear another girl
sniffle loudly by the sinks
Doesn’t she know to
keep her sadness to herself?
I shake my head, and the peeling bark
of the door softly welcomes
my returning, dispassionate stare
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The purging goddess stands up
I can see through the planks in the door
a shaking back of a hand
wiping across teeth, smeared with lip gloss.
Tendrils of hair stick to her face in clumps,
eyes hollow and warped
A weak cough, then the goddess’s
splintering words scratch across
the gaps in the doorframes
“Hey, are you okay?
I’m sorry if things aren’t going well today
But I’m sure tomorrow will be better, yeah?”
Her speech is filled with soft, blossoming clichés,
meaningless petals of thoughts
Even so, her kindness
lifts my forehead off the door
How could she have known
that my smile was decaying today?
Was my soft sadness that visible?
I open my mouth to respond and
the crying girl gives a muffled,
“Thanks.”
I step out of the dying stall
A trace acidic smell stains the air
A shining foliage of salty tears
adorns the edges of a sink
The girls have gone,
retreated behind infinite classroom doors.
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Amanda Wolf
Grade 11
Mt. Lebanon High School
Poetry
Skaters
“Praying is for cowards!”
she shouts
a smear of leather and teenage gravel
She
roars past
graffitied
Jesus on the concrete as
Chunks of your hair lift
off your forehead
from the force of her wind
Grip those wheels tight, boy.
Rite Aid lip gloss drips
down
decorates her broken ribs
and you have to
her chin
Stop catch your breath
And send off a
small prayer.
Watch her fly
down the hill, that burning flame
of beauty and
cracked pavement grace
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Her punctured hands and feet
a thick headband of thorns
and a whole lotta hurtin’ are
Covered by that ratty blonde hair
those fever eyes
God
She is everything that is right in the world
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Brianna Caridi
Grade 12
Bishop Canevin High School
Poetry
the Blood moon is
no less Beautiful
When I ask you
What is the
on white denim
blot spreading as
ruby shining
“purity” is
consumed
by what?
Do you see the power
That I see in that
stain
for all I hear
is faint laughter from a deep voice
cowardice
bursting from below your surface
will you tell me the name of this blemish
when I ask if you realize
I am a woman
Your face will turn rosy when I tell you that yes
I am bleeding
While your eyes will tell me that this blood is not okay
When will you see beyond my
sanguinity
will you ever tell me that my blood is beautiful
that I am strong for bleeding
that I am life-giving
that I am valiant
I want to hear you say that
I am so much more than just red
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Chelsianna Havko
Grade 12
Montour High School
Failure
Failure
Is sitting at the table,
Lukewarm cup of coffee in hand.
Hours trickling by
Like the last drops of water coming out of the spicket
Because Papa couldn’t pay the bills no more.
Failure
Is the last apple tree,
Alone in the yard.
Clenching on to its last feeble flowers and ugly, imperfect fruits
Like Mother grasping her baby to her breast
Because all the other ones have died.
Failure
Is watching your hopes
Rise up, up, up
Only to have them come crashing down
Like Grandma’s ancient China set with the hand painted hearts
Because nice things shouldn’t be raised on pedestals.
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Chloe Butcher
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Allderdice High School
Poetry
Alien
What happens when we fear the idea of other?
Does it crush our bones,
Our souls,
Into a bleeding pulp?
Does it blind us,
Until we can’t even see how far our hatred has gone?
No.
It slowly seeps in,
Contaminating our children,
Indoctrinating them to hate,
To ignorance,
To derision.
But it is not us that we hurt the most.
It is those who we classify as other,
That we subjugate every damned day.
In the name of justice
Hatred rears its ugly head.
And we bless our freedom
On the shackles of it.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Chloe Butcher
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Allderdice High School
Winter
The scent of snow
Fills the cold dark air.
Rippling across my jacket,
Rushing into my nose,
Through my brain,
Out of my lungs,
In warm huffing breaths.
Boots crunch
Against a pure white sparkle;
Toes slowly growing numb
Succumbing to the sweet siren song of sleep.
The trees scream
Not yet.
Not yet at the snow scented wind.
Colors bursting into a spectacular blaze
Of gold, green, red, orange.
Flaunting their defiance
One last time
Before the bitter
Colorless winds
Bury their hue,
Deep below the pure white.
Left to rot.
Colors hidden.
Trees moaning.
All is still.
Reminiscing the last call
Of riotous life
Before cold death.
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Chloe Walls
Grade 12
Gateway High School
Poetry
Where I’m From
I am from too many cozy blankets on the couch,
from leave-in conditioner and wide tooth combs.
I am from the bright red front door.
The smell of dinner simmering in the crockpot.
I am from my mother’s garden in the yard
the sweet scents of the vibrant-colored flowers
just a thought away.
I’m from poor eyesight and thick thighs,
from Laura Mae and Sean.
I’m from untimely innuendos and inappropriate holiday cards
and from eagerly anticipating Aunt Renee’s
famous mac and cheese.
I’m from “because I said so” and “I’ll give you something to cry about”
and “love you forever like you for always.”
I’m from Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune after dinner,
from screaming answers at contestants that can’t hear you.
I am from barking dogs and a cat with a weak meow.
From melt in your mouth pot roast
and you can never have too much butter mashed potatoes.
From the shrapnel that will forever remind my dad of his service.
From my mom’s colorful tattoos that I always forget she has.
Enough scrapbooks to fill a bookshelf,
flipping through the pages is like travelling in time.
Each moment preserved by a camera
as fresh in my memory as if they just happened.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Ciara Sing
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
For the Black Boys That
Never Learned How to Swim
for Isaiah
I’ve been having a hard time taking showers
without curling into a ball, gasping for air.
I can still see you wading in the water,
the level just below your knees,
the depression showing against your cheek.
I wake up, the matted down comforter
sticking to my arm hairs, gasping for air,
head falling with gravity over the side of the bed.
I wish we could start praying, eyes closed,
head bowed—supposedly leaning forward
opens your airways—though I don’t know
if God can hear underwater.
Holding my breath has become an unconscious act.
I count the rain drops’ shadows over the sleeves
of your Ninja Turtle hoodie hanging by the window sill,
forty-seven drops later I gasp for air.
For forty-seven drops I thought I could save you,
thought I could grip your slippery arms in my hands,
wrench ourselves through the choppy waters,
push ourselves through the river’s hallowed womb.
Gasping, gasping, gasping and choking and gasping
the desire to breathe—to save you—wasn’t enough.
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Emily Rhodes
Grade 9
Upper St. Clair High School
Poetry
Carrion
Your cheekbones are laid in the sun,
temples hollowed,
wispy hair scraped into a braid
tickling the branch of your collarbone,
tightened ligaments exposed.
Skin is not a good blanket for your freezing bones.
Sunken breasts
swallowed by a brittle rib cage.
your heartbeat echoes through your body,
It says it’s too tired to go on.
It asks for mercy.
But you can only hear the critics.
Delicate bones.
Fraying tendons.
You drink sunlight for breakfast
and dine on clouds and dew.
Rain collects
in the bowl of your hips,
bones glued together
with fading tissue.
Someday you’ll fall apart.
Darling,
they tell you
you have
a body to die for;
they’re right.
It’s killing you.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Erin Park
Grade 9
Pittsburgh Allderdice High School
The Worker’s Word
The dark, black, billowing smoke
through the cold, dim streets
On a morning like every other
as the days seem to repeat.
The first rays of sun roll in
like loud bursts of lightning
Through the many deep valleys
of the city I reside in.
My work boots click off of the cold dirt;
As the sun continues to rise.
My cracking palms begin to hurt
and I silently close my eyes.
I gaze upon the clouds of ash around me;
Like a dark volcanic winter.
The willowing trees seem to be melting
like old, dusty embers.
Churning through the thick liquid metal
As it bubbles and burns deep into the sky.
Stopping and continuing before it begins to settle,
and I stop to think just why?
You know this little place I live,
the city glistening with steel.
But you don’t know the process of creating,
you don’t know how we feel.
Burning and scraping all day
Smoke blasting our lives away
We have to suffer to get our pay.
And I know this may be slightly chiche.
So I will work every morning,
Late into the night.
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Poetry
My body weak and sore;
As I stand pale and white.
And I ask one small favour of you . . .
Say if you disagree,
But do not forget the things I do
And do not forget about me.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Hazel Rouse
Grade 12
Barack Obama Academy of International Studies
Sirens
The brush of cool air whips against my face,
We are far out at sea.
No land in sight no matter the way you spin it.
The compass says go back (go forward).
We disagree on how to proceed.
The dingy we rowed out on is not what I wanted,
A cruise would have been better.
The dingy we rode out on is breaking down,
The salt water is harsh against our wooden floor,
You wreck the rocks we see, killing their joy and mine for the company.
We are all lonesome out here.
You rail against me, claustrophobic in the open air,
Which way, which turn, witch boy.
I am no psychic.
When I said let’s go out to sea, I meant a cruise.
The darkness is cold, and wet, but the stars are the most beautiful away from
everything.
I tell you to look up and you tell me you’ve not got the time.
I tell you to look up and you tell me to shut up.
I tell you to look up and you laugh,
I had no idea hyenas were out at sea.
The storms roll in, and the waves crash down.
It is cold, and wet, and we are both crying,
But I am crying louder, and you cannot hear your own over mine.
The hyena survives through the rain and our dingy is sinking.
You throw everything unneeded overboard,
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Poetry
But I needed some of it.
I claw at you, grabbing for it, pushing you,
You don’t like being close to the edge, being out of control, and the hyena
returns.
And our dingy is sinking.
You think I don’t notice your stack of brass and gold,
Your infinite anger weighs twice as much as I do.
It is cold, and wet, when you throw me overboard, saying you love me,
Saying you’ll miss me, saying I can climb back on when the water is all out,
The hyena is silent as you drift off into the distance.
It is cold, and it is wet, and the rocks are gone, the sharks are gone,
The storms are gone, the boats are gone.
Which way, which turn, witch boy.
I am warm, and dry, although I am sinking.
Witch boy.
I am clear, and I am seeing, although I am sinking.
Witch boy.
I am the currents underneath the surface, as I am sinking.
There are no hyenas out at sea, but there is faint laughter in the distance.
They tell me they heard my cries, and found my things, and pulled me under.
They tell me the water was never in the dingy, the storm was nothing but
light rain,
They told me everything was okay.
This is how sirens are made.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Hunter Greenberg
Grade 12
North Allegheny Senior High School
Legs
Inspired by Paul Delvaux’s The Village of the Mermaids (1942)
I have
legs
The kind that tie me to the ground
silken skirts ensnared under my toes
But if I am a skirt this village is a foot
and I’m squandered by its mundane existence
My perfect
hair
falls around my perfect blank face
and coats my back in a perfect even shine of dark conformity
But I would give anything to have the sun streak my hair with gold
and to run my hands through it as the wind twisted it into a mess of
strands and sands
I would like
to run abounding to the ocean
And to swim away ensnared in the undertow
like a mermaid free as the mountain and the sea that always seem
so close to me
But I digress
that’s not how it works here
Regimented and cemented
Their eyes
circumvented me as I lamented
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Poetry
We perch like perfect birds of deities
in a fenced in lot as if we’re caged canaries
with long necks, straight backs, and a look of pleasantry
(although for me it is a false serenity)
I pretend to be
just like the rest awaiting a ship
to bring back my lover from water’s abyss
But my only love is
the sea
itself
My dress outlines my body
giving me the shape of the tail I so desire
But there is such misery in longing for what I will never acquire
Because
I have
legs
The fundamental extremity that should help me
wander freely
binds me
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Jack Scott
Grade 9
Fox Chapel Area High School
The Winter Sport:
A Ski Racing Sonnet
The howling wind blew on from nights before
And turned the slope’s fresh snow to deathly ice,
Lowering the heights that we could soar.
Nothing less than perfect would suffice.
The cool mountain wind had stung my skin.
We ate a frozen breakfast at the base,
Staring through the glass, quiet within.
The hill stared back with malice in its face.
We started up the lift without our gear
And practiced on the steepest hill around.
The wind continued screaming, all could hear,
And blew the gates down towards the ground.
The winter sport consumed by those that feed.
The wind and the ice delay and they impede.
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Jordan Crivella
Grade 11
Pittsburgh Allderdice High School
Poetry
operation protect the people
eight school shootings in a mere seven weeks. fact.
138 innocent children and teachers killed since sandy hook.
138 people never came home. 300 left hospitals with beating hearts, but will
never fully recover. fact.
167 weapons used in mass shootings were acquired legally. fact.
the government enacts change. fiction.
the people change, the places change, but the mass murder weapon
stays the same.
as children bite bullets,
people on capitol hill tweet their apologies and say a prayer, thankful it
doesn’t happen there.
they fill their pockets with the innocent lives that have been stolen,
sharing their sympathies from the safety of their million dollar homes, but
never taking action.
time ticks on and more people die, but their reactions stay the same.
others are paying the price for their failures.
this blood is on their hands too.
a day of love transformed into that of tragedy.
14 kids woke up, got dressed for school, grabbed their backpacks, and rushed
out the door.
they expected a normal day, likely boring.
those kids will never return home again, never see their parents again, never
speak again, never laugh again, never breathe again.
their deaths are greeted by another blame game, but no change.
a 7 year old girl watched her best friend die on a playground.
they planned to get married when they were older, a promise
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that will now go unfulfilled.
crippled by her anxiety, she’s too afraid to go to school, her life was stolen
before she even reached double digits.
even at age 7 she could see the truth that seems to elude so many,
guns kill!
a fifteen year old boy sits across from his therapist
his eyes hardened by sights no person should ever see.
he asks, “why did my brother have to die?”
but the kind, old woman sitting across from him has no words of wisdom
this time.
there is no right answer,
he didn’t have to.
a mother is dressed in all black as sorrow floods her mind.
her son’s thin, lifeless body is slowly lowered into the cold, dark earth,
his casket covered with dirt and marked with a stone.
as tears rush down her face, she screams for action, something to ensure no
person else ever feels the way she does now.
but the senators have already forgotten, the NRA is lobbying once again.
how can the kids of today be the voice of tomorrow if they are
not alive to see it?
can’t you see this system is broken and it is time for a change?
how many people have to die as a result of senseless gun violence before
policies change?
we say, not one more.
inaction is no longer an option.
your thoughts and prayers will not revive the victims,
we demand policy and change.
enough is enough!
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Kieren Konig
Grade 10
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Poetry
Water
when i flinch, do not shake me.
i am nothing but water
feeding the fire;
every day i make the flame bigger.
and as it grows,
my mouth turns to the color of glass.
it’s opacity fading,
until you can see right through me,
past the clear of my chapped lips
and rotten teeth.
when you see me,
if you see me,
comment on the clear of my wrists,
how blood once dried there,
and when you notice that
there was not a space for me then,
comment on my breath
and how it reeks.
comment on my clothes.
my jaw.
comment on the bruise
underneath my left eye.
comment on the stained glass stuck in my heart
and how i impaled myself with it.
no, this is not how i died.
i died a barrel of words underneath the rope
i used to hang myself with.
and when the police officer called me dirty,
i went home and bathed.
i soaked my skin in watered down rum.
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i bleached my fingertips,
letting them sink in the
cold, wet, chemical water.
i was not afraid.
i was never afraid.
i was whole.
and human.
and i never wanted someone else to die.
and when the day came for me,
i left a butterfly still in its cocoon.
washed away
with the rest of them.
washed away
with the water.
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Lauryn Davis
Grade 12
Upper St. Clair High School
Poetry
Parental Guidance
I didn’t cry when I came out to my parents.
I was nervous.
I shook.
But I didn’t cry.
Because it’s not sad,
My love does not depress me.
My parents didn’t cry when I came out to them either.
They had the ideal reaction.
They weren’t sad.
They weren’t angry.
They weren’t happy.
Because who I love in no way directly affects them.
So, why is it that my love affects you?
Yes, you.
I’m talking to the homophobes and transphobes.
To those who use religion as a shield for hatred
Because you once read in a book that
I am sick.
I am disgusting.
I am sinful.
You cherry-pick which sins are sinful and make sure they don’t apply to you.
God can forgive you for murder but God can’t forgive me for love.
Well then, I don’t need the book you’ve been reading.
I’m talking to the homophobes and transphobes.
To those who say, “Well, that’s just the way I was raised.”
You are not your parents.
You are not forced to follow in their footsteps.
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You are your own freethinking spirit.
You choose to be hateful.
Recognize cruelty.
Why is my love not of equal value to your love?
Why is my love sinful?
My girlfriend is afraid to hold my hand in public.
She is afraid that we will be attacked,
That no one will help us,
That those whose jobs are to protect us will look on a laugh.
We will not go to court.
The court is never in our favor.
I can’t come out to the rest of my family.
I can’t come out to the rest of my family because we host Christmas.
I love Christmas.
My entire family comes to my house and we laugh and we pray and we eat
and rejoice.
But they don’t know me.
If they did they wouldn’t like me.
I will not be the reason that no comes over for Christmas dinner.
Some restaurants won’t serve me.
Some churches won’t wed me.
Some friends won’t look at me.
Some governments will kill me.
I didn’t cry when I came out to my parents.
On second thought, maybe I should have.
156

Lexi Hall
Grade 11
Bishop Canevin High School
Poetry
Like a Used Car
He was like a used car.
He had stains on his seats
The hood covered in rust and paint chips.
The back seat had a tear,
Memories lay in the fabric,
Worn down from years of wear.
Secrets wedged in the dashboard,
And underneath the seats.
He was like a used car.
Already used and loved and owned.
He was like a used car.
Never truly her own.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Lianna Rishel
Grade 9
Oakland Catholic High School
Case, Severity B
Shh, quiet! It’s truly a mournful day . . .
Abandoned in Death’s maze merits many mournful
Cries, truly they will not remain at bay.
Forever remorseful, please don’t chortle.
Dare I unleash such a grievance on you?
In good conscience, I struggle to submit . . .
To Satan’s chilling embrace, I not flew!
Alack . . . acute premonition here writ.
Therefore, be saddened, and lower your eyes!
Lend, this anomaly not infectious!
No guise, and certainly no lies from I,
This burdensome load brought to inspection
I scored a 92.
158

Lily Tolchin
Grade 11
Pittsburgh Allderdice High School
Poetry
Meteor Shower
You are the world
Strung together with ribbons
Sticking together like spider webs
The sparkling dew mimicking stars in the
Vast space, the same stars
That are laced in your eyes, the
Same ones that I want to
Drown in, to skate circles
Around their heat, I want to
dance with you
in a meteor shower, leaving
umbrellas behind, the moon
beyond us not even
a focal point
We are giants
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Maddie Figas
Grade 10
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Amelia Bedelia and I Walk
Through the Aisles of Tsunami
Surf Shop
Amelia, you and I stick
to Carolina air like sweat.
We’re in the back of the shop,
with the dehydrated heads of fish
and crocodiles. You won’t stop petting
them. I haven’t told you
this yet, but I caught you
stuffing palm tree
keychains into the mouths
of your pockets. They must be heavy
with pirate plastic.
Amelia, tell me you’re not stealing
because you want to remember Myrtle Beach.
I’ve been here for weeks,
and still haven’t found sneakers
swaying from telephone poles,
no bubble gum tattoos line
the sidewalks. Teach me to see past
this shining inauthenticity. Or tell me you’re like me,
tell me you’re not here for the numb sugar.
Sometimes, I wish I could wake up
to the suffocating
warmth of a vacation. That I could leave
the windows open, or stroll
through aisles of hermit crabs shell. But, Amelia
we weren’t made for this place.
You tell me, we weren’t made for anywhere.
160

Poetry
Amelia, who wouldn’t buy your naivety
and a swollen tchotchke, especially
if the sign reads for sale.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Maddie Figas
Grade 10
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Corey I’m Writing Because
Nothing Good Has Happened
Since You Died
Corey, can you tell me what
that night was like? The newswomen
say your mother was wrapping
Christmas presents. I bet you knew exactly
where she hid them. You always knew
how to find things. You caught me in the throat
of the slide, stuck in the pool’s drain.
In spring, you used to dunk me
in the deep end. From below the surface,
I saw your eyes, dandelions against
the waves. You always let me breathe,
even if you didn’t have to. I’d say,
thank you, thank you very much.
Corey, do you remember our broken
games along rubber mulch? The ones
that made my braids come loose,
left my knees torn
and gasping. Corey did you forget
me already?
The night you were shot,
I went to the park to be with you.
No, I’m lying. I went there
because I knew you wouldn’t
be waiting, from the back top,
to crawl into me. I don’t think I can forget
the yellow in your eyes,
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Poetry
all the reasons this shouldn’t
have happened. I don’t think
I can forget how much I loved
hating you.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
MaKayla Wilson
Grade 10
Pittsburgh Westinghouse Academy 6–12
Homewood
Homewood streets
You hear sirens
You see red and blue lights
You hear mothers crying
Sons lying in the back alley
Covered in blood-filled white sheets
Police blocking off three streets
Looking for the heartless creeps
That left this young black man
Lying on this pavement
Now they’re packing heat
And they can’t sleep
‘Til multiple bodies are lying
In these streets rattled
By rounds from our heat
Mothers identifying their sons
By the tags hanging on their feet
Hard to identify cause of missing
Meat that was blown away from the heat
Closed casket funerals
With mothers crying
Screaming why did
They take my baby away from me
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Poetry
Babies being raised by their
Grandparents cause these heartless
Creeps left their fathers lying
Motionless up under these blood-filled
white sheets
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018
Maria Kresen
Grade 10
North Hills High School
Rape of Youth
I struggle to breathe,
The barbed wire tearing little by little into the tender flesh of my thighs.
The gasp for breath is fruitless—only more shit-laden air straddles my lungs.
I despise the wire.
I hate my punishment for being raped.
They not only raped my body, they slaughtered my spirit,
A far different one from those tender summers below the peach blossom trees.
That suffocating agony—that hellish wire.
The price I paid for it—The price I paid . . .The price of drinking too much cool,
mucky, infected, intolerable, lethal, necessary . . .Water.
Water.
My payment for being their whore.
My gender, my nation, my skin, my hair, my large, round cocoa eyes
That used to be a treasure.
They are my defeat, my downfall, the price I pay for more abhorrence
and animosity.
The searing agony I cannot control rushes through my body, the daggers of lead, steel,
Lost hope, abandoned pride, murdered humility,
My virginal emotions in tatters blackened by the hate I must endure.
All these days.
All the damned price I pay.
All the barbed steel intruding on my flesh.
My freedom,
My hope,
My ambition,
Is not worthy of this wire.
This wire is not the Japanese.
This wire is my lost will to live
Mocking me
And
Butchering me.
166

Maya Shook
Grade 9
Pittsburgh Allderdice High School
Poetry
The Little Guys
In the old brick house at the end of the lane
With the rustic white shutters and blue window pane
Lived a little fruit fly his name was Punt
Ever since birth he was a bit of a runt
He hadn’t been alive for much than an hour
When his mother left him to go sniff a flower
She wished him good luck and she bid him goodbye
And with that she began to fly
But she didn’t get much more than an inch
When the hands clapped she was gone in a pinch
And in the last moments before her death
She spoke her last word and took her last breath
“I’m proud of you my son.
Continue my legacy, my time has come.”
Poor Punt his heart was crushed
He’d witnessed his mother turn into mush
It was quite traumatic for a little fly
So he left the house where his terrors lie
He scrummaged for food in an abandoned alley
It was there he met the fly named Sally
Punt and Sally became the greatest of friends
It remained that way until the bitter end
Together they made the most of their pitiful lives
Living off a crumbs and rotten chives
But then death decided it was Sally’s turn
She was smashed in a butter churn
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Oh what a terrible stench it omitted!
Punt lost his only loves ever requited
Poor Punt his heart was crushed
He’d witnessed his best friend turn into mush
He had no idea what to do
So he flew to the only place he knew
The old brick house at the end of the lane
With the rustic white shutters and blue window pane
In which a happy family resides
Who go on with their extravagant lives
And had no idea of Punt’s grief
That his heart was tattered like a crumpled leaf
Punt went into the corner and began to weep
His eyes drifted and he went to sleep
Little did he know he would never awake
He was killed by a falling birthday cake
Poor Punt his heart was crushed
Quite literally he turned into mush
Death doesn’t mind killing a fly you see
Like the dog doesn’t spare the life of a flea
The world doesn’t stop when a few go down
Life only stops for those who surround
A little girl found the corpse of Punt
She felt sorry for the little runt
A memorial service seemed only right
So she buried him that very night
Outside the old brickhouse on the end of the lane
With the rustic white shutters and blue window pane
Is the grave where Punt’s little body lies
The tombstone reads “Don’t forget about the little guys.”
168

Olivia Balogh
Grade 10
Moon Area High School
Poetry
Enough
Enough is enough.
That’s what I say.
I use my voice to spread the word,
But few listen anyway.
Why is it that gun violence takes
The lives of thousands per year,
But when a change of policy is suggested,
The public closes its ear?
Students in America are fed up with being shot.
We have begun to wonder if we are safe anymore.
Every day when I walk through the doors to the school,
Of my security, I am never truly sure.
What if there’s a shooter today?
What if I have to text my parents and friends “goodbye?”
What if I never graduate, or get married?
What if today will be the day I die?
Another shooting. Another headline.
What’s the damage this time?
Multiple dead, more injured,
Grieving parents, friends, and teachers at the scene of the crime.
Once again, the power to take multiple lives at once
Was put into the bloodied hands of a blurred face behind a gun.
The victims’ lives are gone, their families and friends distraught,
And politicians say, “Thoughts and prayers go out to everyone.”
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Thoughts and prayers.
A real slap in the face.
Is that all they can say?
What about a promise to change the gun laws in place?
Multitudes are dead, and more will die.
The vicious cycle will continue unless something is done.
I never thought I’d have to say this, but
A life is always more important than a gun.
170

Serena Zets
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Poetry
An ode to ollanta
Ollanta, I have found a bed in your foothills.
Salinas de maras, I have found a livelihood
in scouring salt from your mountains of mines.
My hands streaked with limestone,
your salt stings my raw skin.
My hair is matted with the fur of alpacas.
The tug of fingers running through my mane
is not enough to rid me of its tangles.
A girl in the market says I have hair
the color of granos de cocao,
growing freely in the jungle,
ripe for the picking.
Each morning, I shop for fresh papaya,
its pulp as bright as my suntanned cheeks.
Vendedores in the market call out to me,
bonita, bonita, bonita!
They mistake my olive skin for their own.
One compañero says I have skin the color of potatoes,
my faces reddens. In Ollanta, there is no higher praise.
My teeth stained with the acid yellow
of Inca Cola and my lips painted
with the maroon juices of chicha morada,
an Andean syrup made of purple corn.
I wear such shades with pride. I lick my lips
as I rest under the light of your stars.
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Your beams are so much brighter up here
in the mountains, where they are untainted.
Soaring sea levels and smudges of smog
have not touched you yet, you are pure,
you have been blessed by Apu,
protector of the Sacred Valley.
I lie under your stars until the advent of sunrise
jolts me back into existence. Your lax concept
of time is foreign in my homeland
where we never stop to smell
the canary petals of your holy maravilla.
Here, there is nothing more to make of the day,
we rest in our makeshift home in the grasses
of an abandoned soccer field,
goals made of sticks bursting
through the soft fertile ground.
Piece by piece, row by row, we make gardens
out of the moon’s reflection and coca leaves.
In my homeland, coca has been banned
but here, in Ollanta, it grows as wild as honeysuckle.
Its leaves may taste bitter,
but its greenery holds sweet memories.
172

Tara Stenger
Grade 10
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Poetry
Prized Fish
In the grass, Dad taught me how to hook a worm
onto a fishing rod,
how to trick them into letting you string them along
until a prized fish came.
I sat still, mesmerized as he spoke
so confidently about this skill.
I made it a goal of mine to master it,
to make him proud.
His phone rang, he told me it was just a client.
I didn’t know Daddy had a job.
I didn’t know Daddy called his clients, “baby,”
whispered hushed I love you’s
while checking behind his back.
He pried my stubby fingers open,
stuck the fishing rod in it,
and left me to fish alone.
My hand couldn’t even wrap around the handle.
A turtle latched to my bait.
It ran to me, jaws snapping.
Dad dropped his phone on to the grass,
ran to me. I cheered around the turtle,
because I had caught it on my own.
Dad swung his leg back
and kicked it into the lake.
I should have taken the phone out of his hands,
deleted the contact,
silenced the I love you’s,
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been the daughter that could have made him stay.
I learned then that my family was just his bait,
left to be eaten once he found what he was looking for;
his prized fish.
174

Thalia King
Grade 10
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Poetry
Malala and I Tour America
Malala, welcome to Columbine,
where all it takes to be a terrorist
is a trench coat, two shotguns,
ninety-nine explosives, a pair of demonstrative
duffle bags, and a death count of thirteen
plus some change, all of which can be bought
in the “self defense” section of your nearest Walmart.
Malala, welcome to Sandy Hook,
where bullets bite over shattered intercom systems.
And will the twenty missing first graders please report
to the main office for early dismissals,
your parents are waiting for you to grow up,
but that’s something America can’t promise.
Malala, welcome to Parkland, Florida,
the unsuspecting Miami suburb that was activated
with the pull of a fire alarm, six minutes later
and teenagers who can’t even drive
a car are driving the country forward
with common sense, not second amendments.
Malala, welcome to America,
where we don’t dare define terrorism
based on terror because white people
can never be terrorists.
Malala, you know what terrorism looks like.
You, who looked straight down the barrel
and spoke your mind just
so you could go to school,
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you listened as they asked, Who is Malala,
and you stood up, put your hands
on your Nobel prize, looked them dead
in the eyes, you made them listen.
I am Malala.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to everyone who submitted work to the
contest this year. As always, it is the writers who make the Ralph Munn Contest
such an unforgettable experience. It is such an honor to meet with many of the
submitters during the Teen Media Awards and to celebrate their work. This year,
writers throughout Allegheny County sent us 58 prose and 124 poetry pieces.
Once again, the members of the Ralph Munn committee completed a
remarkable amount of work despite their busy schedules. These dedicated library
staff members spent hours reading and evaluating submissions, discussing each
piece and advocating for voices that struck them as particularly powerful. Each
of them is owed heartfelt thanks. Additionally, thank you to Connie Amoroso
for faithfully designing and compiling the printed anthology. Much gratitude
is also owed to our administrators, event planner and marketing team for their
continuing dedication to the contest, the Teen Media Awards and to Teen
Services as a whole.
Thank you to all the educators, librarians, parents, library staff and youth
advocates for encouraging the youth in their life to submit to the contest.
The work of mentoring young writers through brainstorms, revisions and the
emotional process of pursuing publication cannot be overstated.
Of course, a huge thanks to Sharon Flake and Abeer Hoque for judging
the contest this year. Thank you for taking on the complex task of choosing
winners and providing feedback to many of the writers. Your words and comments
mean so much.
Sincerely,
Sienna Cittadino
Chair, Ralph Munn Creative Writing Committee
177

Written by Allegheny County
high school students, grade 9 – 12
Compiled by Carnegie Library
of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County Teen Specialists
2017 Cover Art Winner: “Nature” by Lexi Hall
© 2018 Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
The CLP logo is a registered trademark
of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
carnegielibrary.org