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by C. J. Anderson-Wu On the rooftop terrace, we talked about traveling, like finding stylish and affordable accommodations through online searches, riding bicycles around small towns usually missed by annoying crowds of tourists, and avoiding expensive metropolises with barren cultural lives. We gossiped about other people but revealed nothing about ourselves. Each trip is an escape from one's identity. We complained about real estate speculation in our cities despite the economic recession, which is actually a long and sophisticated process of cross-border money laundering by people fleeing their homelands. We discussed immigration and shifts of citizenship during regime handovers, outbreaks of pandemics and wars far away or impending. Having witnessed the same cruelty of history respectively, are we sharing the same fate after all? "Did you hear about the big movement in Hong Kong in 2019?" "Yes, I did." Two hundred meters away, a train clanked by, drowning out our words. The hostel's fish flags fluttered in the whispering wind. A bird leaped from a broken beam of an abandoned house, flying away from the commotion. In forty minutes, the sun would set where the train had gone. Tomorrow we would depart with the same train to where the sun was setting. It was the moment closest to a tabooed topic, an unnamed incident from several years ago, in our conversation during each of our journeys from the silenced past to an uncertain destiny. Author’s Note: In 2019, two million Hong Kong people took the streets to protest the extradition bill promulgated by the Chinese government. The movement was suppressed by brutal police enforcement and numerous arrests. As of the time of writing, there are still hundreds of protestors incarcerated. C. J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published two collections about Taiwan's military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as the White Terror: “Impossible to Swallow” (2017) and “The Surveillance” (2020). Currently she is working on her third book “Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong.” Her fiction and poetry appear in literature journals in the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa, India, and Iceland, among others. C. J. Anderson-Wu's works have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, including the Mastermind Review and the Art of Unity Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, and the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition by San Francisco University.

by Alyeesha Kaif I wonder if when my father was a boy He anticipated the months of static one coma would bring. The flash of agony In a moment’s notice that Would take away his first life. Perhaps that was why his first love Was the photograph. Travelling the chronicles of A man I’d never met, My hands traverse the crisp edge of Adolescence as it lingers on memories I feel I’ve lived before. An everlasting smile I could never recognise Except at a glance in the mirror , A look of love I’d longed for that my mother Sees reflected in my eyes. I flip the next album in the pile. The sound of my own laugh fills the Silence of a photograph capturing him after a joke while I match his crooked grin, tugged just slightly to the left At the playground with an arm slung around my aunt. I question how much of identity is hereditary as I stare At a kaleidoscope of mirror images, becoming a puzzle of a life that was never mine. How many birthdays more till I Outgrow the boy I see before me? Till the filmstrips in the hourglass slip Away completely from my searching hands And every cranny of his albums has been burned Into my cornea. What more can I do to upkeep this loop of jamais vu Whilst looking at the face I discern to be both His and mine? The page flickers. Seventeen and insane, Kaif is an aspiring journalist, author and poet. An optimist, Kaif believes in the art of capturing the nuances of everyday life in storytelling. She feels everything intensely, often translating her emotions into poetry or prose. She loves Bollywood movies, loud parties and mango smoothies. When she isn’t writing, you will probably find her working on one of her many other endeavours such as graphic design!

by Holly McKenna “i let it burn but it just had to be done” the bomb, florence and the machine i wrote about love as though i owned it. i stowed papers absent-mindedly to be swallowed up into kindling again. the pain doesn’t change, just where you store it – asbestos fingers roused as the promise of softness masked a reserve of steel wool. i’ll make beaded bracelets in the burning house whilst you evacuate at first spark. i can’t muster tears to put the fire out – i sway to the blaze, salve in hand instead, as the smoke insists on catching you up. you’ll wear me whether you like it or not. my mind makes a home amongst the debris. it’s easier to write poems from ash. {hlm} Holly is an emerging poet from central scotland. she is the poet-in-residence for glasgow university's women in law project and has been published in myth and lore, open shutter press, the levatio, honey and lime, vita brevis press, and qmunicate.

The inspiration behind this article comes from the show “Welcome to Samdali.” In this story, the father of the male lead is unable to move on from the death of his wife and blames the mother of the female lead for her death. As he is still unable to move forward from the memories of his wife, he tries to separate the leads by justifying that his wife would not have agreed to such a union. This is a brief and skimmed-through storyline speaking directly from the father’s perspective. As we enter the forever-loving stage of St. Valentine I thought about what could instigate a never-ending love like that one. Love was never described as easy, and in many situations, love is more complicated to understand than hatred. Love is a spectrum with multiple colours and shades. Love varies from right to wrong while walking the line between sanity and insanity. The feeling of love is often romanticised, but the question is: Why do we romanticise finding the right person? Finding the right person may require some of us to walk past many ‘wrong’ persons. The perfect lover may be found while looking in the wrong direction. Some would say that to love someone is to love the relationship that one has built over time. Others would say that love comes as a habit, an addiction, something that no one can actually live without. After all, there are multiple studies, Mercuri et al. (2019) and Berecz et al. (2020), demonstrating the importance of parents’ or guardians’ physical contact during infancy. These studies all come with the understanding that children, when given the appropriate physical and emotional contact by their parents or guardians, have more consistent emotional controls and acquire better cognitive abilities. Therefore, our need for touch and intimacy is a primitive need for survival. As a result, to generate love and affection, we tend to become people-pleasers, gift-givers, and caretakers, mostly because we believe that doing everything to make others happy will make them love us more. After all this is the typical romanticised behaviour we can observe on our social media feeds filled with these forms of ‘affection’ on the 14th of February. From children and adolescents to adults, we will see pictures and videos of love being expressed in multiple forms. From spouses buying flowers or chocolate to going on dates with your lover to giving surprise gifts to your partner, Valentine's Day is essentially the best day of the year for serving love on a pink platter. So, why do we need the never-ending love? If you ask me, we need it for stability.  The sense of knowing that someone will always be by our side without withering away makes us feel safe. It is a comfort zone that everybody looks for and the belief that everyone has their own person out there makes us hopeful for more. That is why when a person cheats on their partner, there is this fear of injustice and this sense of instability. The need for a forever lover is similar to the pursuit of happiness, we will always be running towards something we have no control over, and yet the idea that one day we can reach said goal makes us try harder. Going back to the story from above, the father seeks justice through hatred. Hatred makes him stay stuck in the past and into his memories while everyone around him is moving on with their loved ones’ support. Therefore, I wrote this poem from my perspective of this situation. To Our Never Ending Love “I don’t want you in pain. Imagine how miserable you must be to wish pain to others. If you could one day tell me why did we end like this, Why does the sound of the waves make me seasick? Did you know the scars you left are still opening? My bones are shattering just as I sing. I don't want to be miserable. I don’t want you in pain either. Imagine us once dancing in a symphony. I can only wish for you to find your peace. May your dreams no matter how big reach it utopia. A new world where all you feel is euphoria. I want you to one day find a happy ending. A forever afterlife that makes you feel like breathing.” written by Eugénie Baungaléa

Right now, it feels like I am drowning. Spiraling in a state of overwhelm, I don't know which direction is up. But I know for sure that I’m going down. Grief, anxiety, and fear leave me defeated daily. I am lost in the haze of not knowing where life may take me next…and that scares me. I’ve always needed to have a plan for things, like college, my next career moves, how I want to establish myself as an adult. Unfortunately, with a resume of exhausting customer service jobs, I fear my only purpose is to serve others and leave myself depleted. My heart jumps whenever I see an email notification pop up on my phone. Could this be an offer letter for my dream job—or any job at all? Face ID reveals that this email is yet another rejection letter. When will this cycle of not knowing be over? The only way I can put this feeling into words is through the song, “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish. When the noise of social media gets too loud or I have gone down the rabbit hole of comparing my old self to my current self, this song is my solace. Since 2021, Billie Eilish’s music has been an escape for me. Her lyrics wrap me in a cocoon, blocking out the negative thoughts. While so many of her songs were relatable before, “What Was I Made For?” resonated with me on a different level. Finally, someone had put into words exactly what I was feeling for so many years: the confusing ache of not knowing your purpose and how to articulate that into words. In the song, Billie frequently says, “I don’t know how to feel.” I think Gen Z, myself included, cannot begin to grasp everything that is thrown at us—all of these things we never planned for. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, the degradation of women’s rights, and the exposure of corruption from trusted brand names. From kindergarten through college, we are told to act in certain ways to gain the approval of our peers, teachers, and parents. We followed the same schedule every day for sixteen years. We turned in assignments that were all indistinguishable from one another, just different levels of difficulty. We repeated the same cycle of making friends and losing them. We fell in love and out of it. Through all of this, we have the safety net of education to fall back on. If there was nothing constant in this life, at least we had schooling. But graduation, as liberating as it is, creates an independence that can be daunting. The questions from older generations get thrown at you as soon as you take off your cap and gown. “What do you want to do with your life? What career field do you want to go into? Kids? Marriage? Starting your own business?” If we don’t have the answers, as society has taught us, we are failures. The pressure to plan becomes unbearable. A new month is here, and I still don’t have a plan. No map to lead me to my dream career. No backup options, because Plan A still hasn’t come to fruition. Before disengaging from TikTok, I came across plenty of stories from 20-somethings feeling the same way. In the moment of watching these TikToks, I felt as if I had been inducted into a special club. This club is filled with people who have been laid off, fired, closed their businesses, lost followers, and much more. Yet after reflecting, I am still not convinced that this mystery of not knowing my next move is an acceptable part of being 26. I can’t help but ask myself, “What’s wrong with me?” The clock is ticking, and I’m hoping to have some sort of plan before I turn 30. written by Courtney Lowry

by Dawn Sands So this is how it ends, grey sea morphing into grey sky, horizon a thin balance beam today, white ice sun rays skirting behind clouds & there is the tornado, does anybody know what it is? We’ll be standing on greyscale pebbles bunched together, a row of fading trainers drained of light. I think your face will be too gaunt to laugh or otherwise you would, the irony of it, really, because at the hospital they scooped you into tubes and tapped out your life on a screen, moulded your soul back together until you were well & now there is this. What actually is it, though? It’s all I can think and if I asked myself as a six-year-old she would know, or she’d believe she knew — God, at least it is me and not her, or she’d be frozen skeletal to the bed whispering her final confessions into the night & hoping the wind is strong enough to carry her to heaven. She thought in heaven they slept in purple sleeping bags. Anyway, now I see it, column-vortex choreography spinning and spouting between sky and sea like a Grecian pillar holding up the heavens. I remember you telling me what a frieze was aged six, and it is us and it is Pompeii and it is silent suspension & probably I should be worried about pyroclastic flow but I am giddy and I think if we were filming this we’d laugh years later. I suppose we still could. It is only a warning. The shape of it is always something that has pulled the soles from my feet. Let us stand here, in a line, with no tornado, so that perhaps when the day comes this is the frieze we will be locked in, & please sit me down and tell me how it functions before the day it kills us in our sleep. lament from a foreign shore Dawn Sands (she/her) is a 17-year-old writer currently focusing on poetry, but she has also written a novel and is working on a weird novella that spans 7000 years and several instances of humans finding beauty wherever they can. She was a Top 15 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2023, and you can find her on Instagram @dawnllsbooks.

Dear issue 07 readers, I would like to welcome you to an issue that celebrates vulnerability. We often refer to happy emotions as something positive and sad emotions as something negative. But I believe that there is no such thing as positivity or negativity in emotions. Naming an emotion “negative” makes us not want to feel that emotion, suppress that emotion. But all emotions are worth feeling. Like how crying helps activate our parasympathetic nervous system and how shouting releases endorphins (endorphins are “happy hormones.” Ain’t it ironic how shouting and expressing anger brings up happy hormones?), properly expressing our emotions can help us take a step towards growth. What better ways could we express our emotions than to read and write? Yet again, thank you to everyone who made this issue possible :) Please enjoy issue 07, Beneath the Skin. Sincerely, Seohyun Ryu Founder and Editor-in-Chief The Malu Zine

by Jovi Aviles I sunk into the wrinkled seats of Mack’s Passat, let my ears rub against the cracked leather and listened to the rubbery crinkle and pop of his hand-me-down car. My eyes were heavy with a high I wasn’t able to shake that night. Partly because of the way the hot-boxed air lingered—swirled and curled into smoke spirals that clouded his fucked-up windshield—and partly because I didn’t want to let that faded, fleeting feeling go. I met Mack as soon as he sputtered into town, at the tortured age of fifteen. With an awkward bump and stumble through a fluorescently-lit Krauser’s convenience store. I grabbed a sweet tea from the fridge that reeked of mold, and when I turned around, I was met with an impish smirk I’ve only ever witnessed from stoned-out losers. He chuckled before speaking to me, before blurting out a very loud… “Can you spot me a five?” I suppose that sentence, both clumsy and spontaneous—like our short-lived friendship—summed up the type of boy Mack would ever grow to be. He was never mature—or serious—enough to earn the title of a “man”. At least in the traditional sense. I thought Mack was always a real cool dude, suave in his 16-year-old-swag, how it seemed to melt and emit off his olive skin. I saw in him what I always wanted to see in myself, care-free and destined to live a short, whirlwind life. Sweet with clumsiness, rich with one-night stands and messy hangovers from the night before. And for a short while, when all of my other friends from freshman year had fizzed out throughout the summer months, when Mack was the only real friend I had, I wasn’t far from that reckless existence. I would jump into the front seat of his beat-up clunker, kick my ripped vans up on the dashboard, and follow the roads and the Northern California skyline as my eyes would grow more and more weight, until I felt like a feline. I had forgotten all about the friends I had abandoned, with their pin-straight hair smelling of processed coconut, each hair on their body starchy and prim. Getting lost together in the hot, sweet world of teenage boys. Their knees knocked together like bony skeletons, porcelain and light like the clouds of perfume spritzed in every moistened crevice of their muted skin. They were classic, wild west coast girls. And I was glad to be rid of them. But that night, when my gaze became blurred and clouded with the smoke that clung to the leather seats, Mack had become mute. We had parked at one of the many waterfronts we deemed “our spot”, where our plainly platonic shenanigans always came to a shuttered stop as we dragged our attention to the summer sunsets. Reflecting over the water like the quivering puddles back home. It was the summer before my senior year, and Mack was fresh out of high school. I was naively seventeen, and since this had been the first summer he hadn’t gotten a restriction on his license—from driving too stoned to tell which light was red or green—we went everywhere along the prevailing shore of California. From Malibu to San Francisco, across every bridge connecting one balmy, cloudless land to another. Mack had just shifted gears when parking the car as it clunkered across the pavement. We were alone—just us and the rusted railings—and had I known what our routine loneliness would have brung that night, I would have hitchhiked back to Auburn. “Can you roll this time?” He asked, quietly, as he handed me the papers he stashed in the junky glove compartment. “Uh, yeah. Sure.” I looked back and forth a few times, from him and the salmon-colored papers, trying to figure out why he was staring at his calloused hands. “I took my senior pictures the other day,” I said. Attempting to spark a conversation. “I tried to bribe the guy to let me see the photos before he sent them out.” Mack wouldn’t look at me, he just stared down at his palms that began to grow clammy. “Of course, all I had was a grinder and three dollars in quarters.” I laughed with a smile that felt pitiful. But Mack wouldn’t have noticed, I couldn’t even tell if he had heard me. He seemed to be somewhere else entirely, within a world of his own skin, buried beneath the scarred flesh of his hands. After I finished rolling and switched out the CD, Mack took the joint and exited the car. I followed. He leaned over the edge of the waterfront railing and took a long drawl from the pink paper. He exhaled the smoke coolly—unusually slowly—like a villainous movie character, savoring each briny hit, sucking it all the way through his body. Until the smoke dissolved like the sea foam below. I waited until he had smoked the whole thing, until the joint was nothing but crumbled ash on another simmering sidewalk. “Charlie’s parents are out of town. He’s having a few people over, so I told him we would go,” He said, coughing. “I thought we had other plans tonight,” I huffed. He blinked at me. “Well, I didn’t think it was much of a problem if I changed the plans.” “Well—I guess—it’s not, but I would have liked to know.” His eyes were empty, his head droopy and melty, it seemed like if he would trip his brain would spill like a left-out Mel’s milkshake. “But I just told you.” His eyes crinkled. “Whatever. It’s fine. You don’t get it, so let’s just go,” I stepped off the lifted sidewalk and stomped right onto a spider, crunched it beneath my boots and didn’t look back, even after I felt his gaze watch me walk away. He was brewing up something with anger in his mind, I could feel the hostility like it was heat, engulfing me from the soles of my feet. “Well, help me understand,” Mack pleaded as he crawled back into the car, desperate and anguished like most guys tend to never be. I just stared straight ahead, watched the clouds roll in like liquid. Mack was already half-dazed, half-disoriented and half-way given up with the conversation, the weed already pouring over his system, synching his nerves and emotions shut like a pulled drawstring. I let him stare through me as Mojave 3 hummed through his speakers, even with the music the silence was engulfing, overbearingly deafening. “You need to tell me when things are bothering you,” I breathed, the silent treatment shattering as my words dribbled out. “Instead of me sitting there like an idiot babbling when you’re obviously somewhere else.” I turned my head and stared at his falling eyelids. He swallowed, bit his chapped lip that was bleeding from salty ocean spray. Nodded gently. “Okay. Fine.” I paused, ran my hands down the fabric of my faded jeans. Itching, seething, desperate and ready to pounce. “That was the last of our weed.” I blurted, my voice blew sharp. Mack cleared his throat. “Oh,” I heard him swallow, rough and fidgety. “I guess it was.” “Don’t act like you didn’t know, you didn’t even fucking offer me any of it,” My tongue was spitting syrupy insults that rested at the back of my throat.. “I’m sorry, Vi, I just don’t think you should be smoking too much,” I chewed on my lip, bit until I tasted metallic blood swimming between the rim of my lips. “You know, considering…” “Don’t even fucking start, Mack. Acting like you’re all fucking high-and-mighty cause’ you stick to getting stoned before working your fucking shift at In-N-Out. You smoke like it’s gonna get taken away from you…” I shook my head back and forth, prattled on about his loser lifestyle. “Maybe I should keep the stash from you, see how bad your fucking withdrawls are—” “Stop it.” His voice was quiet, desperate. But I couldn’t hear, and wouldn’t care. “No! You sat there staring at your hands like there was a fucking riddle on them and then you smoked the last of all of our fucking weed—” “Our? OUR weed? You can’t even pay for the shit!” Mack screamed, flailed his hands like he was on a tarmac waving down some foreign plane. The car suddenly started to feel hot, like I had grown an extra layer of skin. I ripped off my hoodie and threw it in the backseat. My eyes lingered out the window. It dripped in bird shit. “Just drive to the party.” “Violet—” “Just fucking drive, Mack.” My voice grew quiet, agitated. He understood my frustration, felt it on the same level he stooped down to. He started the car and we began to roll out of the lot, sped down the sandy back roads until we merged into one of the main highways. Lone at dusk. The one thing about Mack is that he could snap out of a high no matter how much he had smoked. I guess he was mature in that one, isolated way. … High school parties are this weird phenomenon that no one really addresses unless they’re reflecting on the sour, regretful days of their teenage-riot youth. Each high school party I had been to—outside or in—always had a heap of humid, adolescent bodies stuck together in a crowd too oversized for whatever suburban lot it partook in. I never really believed in cliques before, and my school didn’t necessarily have those groups like you see in the movies, but we did have a handful of broken cliches. The white girls who were either on the dance team or the cheer team, both equally filled with their own drama that made my head spin and my throat want to hurl from the sheer dramatics of it all. We have the stoners who are always breaking a planter's pot or decades-old garden gnomes from these cookie-cutter houses. And there’s always that one guy—who you’d never expect to—but would be there with a broom and pan, scraping up the remains of his friend’s sobriety, scattered and splashed all across the soiled cement. We all downed beer or twisted teas, and smoked those plump, salty-tasting joints that we all scored from one of the two dealers that would sell to our age group. And everyone’s eyes were forever, frantically fading into the night. Every time I went to one of these parties, I felt like a ghost that’s embarrassingly translucent. An outcast that’s being passed through the eyes of all the kids who have always been seen. And I didn’t fit in that scene, my shoulders tensed and my smile turned straight as I walked through the fleshed halls of the party, walking past drunk make-outs and people zeroing whatever smoke they were able to get their hands on. My friends hijacked their other friends as I succumbed into present fomo. Wishing I was anyone else in this big cosmic joke of a world. And this was exactly what Charlie's party had been like. Full of people with faces too familiar to remember the names of, and too humid to do anything else but mosey around and drink next to veiled strangers. But ever since Mack and I had met, I was able to cling to him throughout every single one of these outings. Since he knew every dealer within a five-mile-radius, our stash would always be dirt cheap, even if it came in ziploc bags. And when the time was right, when there was too much puking or crying or police sirens for our liking, we would dip as elusive as we had come in. Mack parked further down the street than usual, since the zoned asphalt was already littered with cheap clunks of junk. “I thought it was supposed to only be a few people.” I said, noticing the cars whirr past the window. “Is this going to be a fucking problem the whole night?” Mack barked. His lips were tense, clenched as if he was about to peck something. “Nevermind, let’s just get out.” I whispered, and opened the door. He cleared his throat, brushed the hair out of his eyes. “Vi,” he started, “do you ever think…” I huffed an impatient breath, my leg sticking out of the car door. “Do you ever think about us?” I stared at his eyebrows. They looked cartoon-ish. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” … We walked the sidewalks for a while, dragging our shoes and scuffing the soles in an effort to make the most noise possible, without having to murmur a word to each other. Mack’s hair wasn’t tied into a measly man-bun like it usually was. Instead, he let it down, and it was shorter than I remembered. His hair was light, muddy with a brown color that fell about an inch below his shoulders. I’ve always thought that Mack was the type of boy I could fall in love with, if I ever got the chance to learn how. He let girls swoon over him, especially the drunk, slobbering ones. Who couldn’t even get out a sentence without slurring so bad you would think they were having a premature heart attack. He would always brush them off, though. Resisted their attempts even if they were the types of pretty you only see in foreign models and celebrities who died too young. I always knew he could find any girl who would love him as tenderly as his dreams. They would smother him with all the love, all the sex, all the affection a guy could ever want. But he never allowed them to. I kept thinking about Mack, about his tactics and his ways with women. I was looking at him the whole walk to Charlies. Sort of analyzing his mannerisms, the way he licked his lips, the way his feet stumbled over each-other—no matter how fast he was moving—and the way his smile grew wider and wider with each hit he took of whatever he could smoke. I emerged from thinking so deeply once we reached the doorstep. Charlie's house was all black and white, clean and proper, except for a blinding red front door. I stared at it. “Are we going to be like this the whole night?” He asked, with a defeated sigh, and looked down at his shoes. “We don’t have to be,” I replied, facing him now. “Vi–” He was cut off by Charlie whipping open the door, and ushering us in by shoving two glass beer bottles into our hands. Charlie was already slurring his words, they melted into each other like a string of alphabet soup, and as he was serending Mack with his drunken song, I sneaked off to escape Mack’s company. Something I hadn’t done in two years. Throughout the hours where I had lost Mack, I had managed to find the group of girls I had once spent all my time with. They noticed me from across the pool, and all flocked towards me in the sandals that clucked like peckish chickens. As their clacking grew more near, I plastered my face with a strained smile. Their greetings were lame, processed and plastic. It was hard to believe I spent my whole freshman year with these girls practically conjoined at the hip. “Vio-let Colt!” The brunette elongated each syllable, rolled off her tongue like melting candy. She reached out her arms to embrace me. They all crowded around me as if nothing had changed, as if we had plans the next day to pollute the local mall with our deathly cloud of perfume. I wish I had forgotten their names. But the memories of them had sunken into every crack and crevice of freshman year, and they made an impression that was unfortunately ever-lasting. Even though we had grown into completely different people. The brunette, I learned, had dabbled in cocaine this summer. It’s probably why she coddled me so, buttered me up with an embrace too tight. My chest felt as if it were constricting to her touch. She had the nose for it, sniffling every few seconds. It seemed the others hadn’t latched on to her new-found addiction, but from the way they were huddling around her it was obvious they weren’t far from her own fate. “We saw you walk in with Mack Walls. Can’t believe you two are still…bumpin’.” The blonde one smiled, smacking hard on her bubblegum. “Bumpin’?” I probed. “Ya! You know, makin’ the nast.” Their slang made my head hurt. “Oh..Oh no, no, we’re just friends, Lor. It’s really not like that.” Their threaded eyebrows raised all at the same time. Each one of them clenched a red solo cup filled with liquor so strong the smell was left to simmer on my tastebuds. “Well, that’s..urm..surprising.” She giggled a painful smile. “I mean…the way he turns down every girl…” Her face was pulled with regret, like she had said too much. The brunette gave her sinister looks. “Well, he’s either gay or misogynistic. I swear we thought you two were together!” She smiled as if that settled the storm brewing in my stomach. I stayed silent, waited for them to continue the conversation for me. They proceeded to rant about how every girl had tried and failed with Mack, and each time he would get violent, aggressive towards their flirtations. And after the way he had been acting towards me a few hours earlier, I no longer found those accusations hard to believe. “One time,” The brunette started, leaned in real close, “My friend—Laura—went up to him after a party. You had just left and he seemed like he was in an alright mood,” I remembered that night, I had left at twilight, the sky was a deep blue and Mack had begged me to stay. My head had begun to hurt, and I was dealing with a withdrawal, something I wasn’t crazy about making public. “So she had gone up to him, you know not in a desperate sort of ‘I have to have you’ way. But he got supper stand-offish and, after she had talked to him for a few minutes—I mean, I swear it was only five minutes or so, couldn’t have been that long—he went batshit fucking crazy. Saying he wasn’t interested and threatening to call the police for a harassment report.” She took a swig out of her mysterious liquid, licked her peached lip-glossed lips and continued like it was an interrogation. “Laura ran off crying, of course. I mean, she wasn’t trying to sleep with the guy, just thought he was cute and—you know—wanted to talk to him or whatever. But after that she swore off guys for months. I think he even gave her a bruise from holding her arm so tight…” The other girls had drifted off into other conversations, about senior trips after prom, sales at the Beauty is Pain Supply Store, and whatever other topics were used to captivate their small attention spans as short as twizzlers. “He never told me that,” I murmured, my hands between my knees. She nodded and sucked her teeth, as if her sympathy was genuine. “So we had just assumed that you two were together, because of the scene Mack had caused with Laura. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it.” She tilted her head like a cross-eyed puppy, and licked her lips to savor the bubbly beer foam. “So…you’re single?” Her eyes trailed along the lining of my lace top. I stood up, disoriented and dazed, refocusing my eyes over the shimmering pool, noticing the full moon bouncing off the complexions of people I had grown up with my whole life. They were all smiling with sunshine emitting from their teeth. Pierced goths rubbed shoulders with jocks, and I felt at ease when I saw all of them partake in routine high school shenanigans such as pool parties like these. There were groups of sweaty guys, already drunk on the thought of this night, lingering around a beer keg, waiting for someone to yell chug. Observing this movie-like night, I wanted nothing to do with Mack’s scene any longer. His life seemed suddenly sad to me, as I stood around people who were peaking and seething with the flourishing nostalgia simmering between their euphoric bodies. I spent the rest of the night wavering between doorways, lingering around talking topics and hijacking smoking circles, partaking in whatever I could that night to feel unreal. To feel like my body wasn’t ever mine, that I was just on the brink of consciousness, and whatever I had felt that night was a feeling that wasn’t my own. It was a borrowed, shared melancholia. A betrayal that had unmasked itself from a boy I thought I knew better than I had ever gotten to know myself. I don’t know what melted into my system that night, what I boiled or shot up or snorted was a topic of its own. It had done the trick, softened into my skin and spread over every cell in my body, numbing whatever felt sinister, evil and cruel. Whatever made me forget those hazy memories of that stranger with the pink papers. I stumbled out of the house, tripped over my vans that were falling apart at the poorly sewn seams. My smile was permanently upturned, I tried to moosh down the lines of my face to create something that merely resembled a neutral expression, but failed as I walked straight into a dusty BMW. It was sometime between three and four in the morning, where the earth was warming and the party-goers were storming out into the dusted sullen streets. I had laid, sprawled my hands against the doors of the car, feeling every physical crevice and imagining a shaky wave slithering between the cracks. My legs were giving out, and only then did I notice the droplets on my bruised knees. It had begun to rain. My skin was laden with mud, I must have trudged through it at some point during the night. I followed the crowd of people rushing into their crappy cars, my hands were dry and smelled of soy. My teeth felt brittle, rubbed against my tongue. And miraculously, my stubbed toes had led me to the back end of Mack’s car. Cerulean blue and pattered with the soft fall of sultry summer rain. I climbed into the backseat, looked at the passing of faces that had morphed with the blurry, wet glass. I felt sad, inexplicably so, as the warm bodies of teenagers fled from around me, like numerous herds of cattle stomping off into the distance. Just as my eyes were closing to the harsh patter of raindrops against metal, Mack threw open the door, looked at me with anguish in his battered blue eyes. My head rested against the window opposite of him, and without speaking, without pestering me about where I had been or scolding me for breaking my year-long break of hardcore drugs, he threw his damp body on top of mine. If I was anyone else in this party, I would have thrown his lanky arms off of me. I would’ve felt the needle scars up and along the fragile skin on his bones and ran out of the car and away until my chest was breathing borrowed air. Until my throat burned and clawed for fresh air and my legs broke and sunk into dusty potholes. I would have kneeled his nuts and pulled his hair until he gave way under my touch. I would have tightened and cupped until he had succumbed underneath my fingertips and melted into the muggy seats beneath our steaming bodies. But I didn’t do all the things I wish I could have done. Mack was just a boy, fragile and broken in his juvenile ways, and I was a girl morphed as a crumbling woman. And so, on the day of Charlie’s summer blow-out, as the last of our innocent youth was dissolving into the humid air, stained with sunrise watercolors, Mack had bore into me between the dwindling hours of tomorrow. My innocent virtue fading with the night, as the golden sun rose and flickered between brewing storm clouds. Jovi Aviles is a teen writer from Northern New Jersey. She is an aspiring author with big goals. Her work has been recognized by PWN Teen and Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her favorite authors are Sylvia Plath and Donna Tartt, whose work inspired her to start writing. She is often found writing in her bedroom and listening to 90s music.

by Tanya Carlos Foreword: I am God’s horrible creation, Violet cheek, bared teeth, Fathomless eyes, Crushed jaw, As I bite, and I bite, Fresh flesh and titanium bones drip all over my face, There are no excuses, There are no saints, I leave behind my castle ruins, My dreams and tears and humbled family, What a sight I must make, like some wild dog, Escaping the clutches of their feral owner, The moon is high on the night sky, The town is blissfully quiet, Everyone and no one will know, And as I limp towards nowhere, I smile, Because No, I will not go out quietly, Anymore i. same blood flowing through our veins. The dinner table is a sacrosanct place. We devour, or we used to devour. Now, I just sit and watch as her sneer grows and shrinks, as her chin lifts up. Blood curls. Your silver crucifix necklace glistens in the fireplace. We eat pomegranates and bread, and father wishes to be in his bed. But like me, we are both stuck in this predicament. I wonder what you would do, if you knew I was wishing for diabolical intervention. “No. You cannot go. Do you see the desolate state of our farm? Do you see how hard your father and I work? Can’t you just be grateful?” The fork flies in the air, food splatters everywhere. “It is unbecoming, impolite.” I echo in my head. All our lady lessons are a farce it seems. Not that I say any of this out loud, you wouldn’t appreciate the interjection, I know. “Mother, at least let me try. At least let me have this chance.” I plead, as my traitorous eyes glisten. It is a losing battle, a non-pyrrhic victory. “No.” “But Mother!” “An ungrateful, petulant girl. I thought we raised you better than that.” “Moth-“ “Eat your food.” A glance at my silent father, cowardly, foolish. His eyes can only trace over my flayed being, thrumming with sadness and frustration. Of course he could not stand up. When has he ever defended me? Let what rivers flow, flow. Let your daughter be swept away in the storm. Red droplets, tendrils spread its wings, pomegranate red. I wonder “How many seeds did I eat, to be stuck in this hell with you?” Blood boils. ii. the life I want to lead. I await with bated breath, in line to see the pretty ladies in the pictures. The sidewalk is littered with strange figures, men in dark coats, women with pretty parasols, and the high rises that watch us all. Fidgeting with my cheap polo, I hope I don’t look out of place. But I feel like they are watching me, pointing out the outlier. Big black cars and luxury shopping bags stain my vision. Large groups of friends frolicking in the park, spilled wine and messy cake. Smoking in the open, fresh air. I want what I don’t have. I want what I don’t have. The movie house is dark, so much colder than the farm. It is all so idyllic from here, the pretty girls descending from the stars. They hop and dance and leap elegantly from the screen. Sometimes I have to cover my eyes, cause I’m afraid they’ll jump out at me. At the end of the day, roses are thrown at their feet. They flash a glistening smile, and bow to whoever’s near. Curtains close, lights flicker out, and they run to their partner, twirling around the dressing room. Flowers are placed in a vase, and their mother kisses their forehead, bathed in her grace. But the facade is cracked. Broken and weak. “It’s not real.” Underneath the scorching white sun, as I monotonously feed the horses hay, veins of envy pool at my feet, and once it starts, it’s hard to stop. I stare at the heavens, trying and failing to find an answer. God never shows his face, never answers my prayers, never. Am I only meant to stay here? Will I forever remain as someone’s beck and call? A supplicant at their feet? My life is a mimicry of mediocrity, a shadow of its empty glory. I slam the pitchfork into the hay, for I fear if I grip onto it some more, the horse might be our dinner. iii. an invisible cage. “Dinner’s ready. Come down.” Mother’s grating voice irks at my reverie. Glancing at our family portrait, I feel a sense of longing for times gone past. Staring at the girl in the mirror, can hardly recognize the sweet baby within. The sweet baby I’ve repressed and crushed and swore I felt nothing for. The broken dreams shattered like obsidian, blurring my vision. Why do I not try? Why did I not try hard enough? They may cut me down, bit by bit, peeling back the layers until there is nothing left. But why do I let them? “Let it all out. Relish.” Yes, the little devil on my shoulder spurs me on. Temptation is the sweetest thing, dissatisfaction is their weapon of choice. I have been necessitating it all my life. Following every rule. Going to every service. Milking all the fucking cows. I want to, I don’t. No, I will devour. I do not go downstairs. I can barely hear the scraping of the plates as mother finishes up her paste. The soft gurling of my father’s mouth as she feeds him slowly. Is this what my life is condemned to be? My dreams are second-hand priority to tend to this? iv. alter ego. I know their patterns. At nine-thirty sharp the lights will all turn black. At ten-o’clock Mother finishes praying the rosary. At eleven, I blink open my eyes. It’s time. The reflection in the mirror mocks me. “You are a coward. Good for nothing. Selfish girl.” It’s her voice again. The devil doesn’t need to persuade me much, they just need to feed me more of her wickedness. It was truly unexplainable, all of a sudden I felt superhuman strength. Punching it square in the center, the mirror’s cracks form a kaleidoscope of, me. Again and again, glass cracks and bottles are spilled all over the room. The bed sheets are ripped and my pillow’s feathers descend in some heavenly way. The wallpaper is a mauled victim of a tiger, my books are bent and dirtied and indistinguishable. Our family portrait is thrown out of the window, into the night. “Let the maggots take it.” And oh, it felt good. It felt amazing to let it all out. When I saw myself again, my irises were red. v. farewell, farewell, farewell. The door creaks slowly, as I bite my lip begging that they won’t wake up. They’re softer, in slumber. More human. Less domineering and annoying and more like the parents I see in the pictures. Gentle. Tender. Loving. The living room is adorned with all these picture frames, and I trace my fingertips over each one. There’s oil in our basement, dark and damp. This room used to scare me when I was a child. Now, I look around the paint cans, old action figures, and light fixtures with fondness. It is the last time I’ll ever see them. I spread the oil over the entire downstairs area. The living room, kitchen, dining room, bathroom. Over ugly tiles and peeling wallpaper. Sticking to white-lace tablecloths and ceramic mugs. It’s calming work, like painting a blank canvas. I see it all. I’ll miss it all. It was hard to douse the living room. Hung there was a picture of the three of us, in front of this very house. When it was freshly-painted and vivid, the start of something wonderful. Or so it seemed. And I realized then and there that I loved them so much I was going to let them kill me. I was gonna stay and toil and work myself to bones in this farm if it meant I would see affection like that again in their eyes. But I never got it. I haven’t seen it in so long, I have forgotten what it feels like. To be embraced warmly. Looked upon gratefully. So now, I wanted to raze it all to the ground. And I will. Because it’s been a long time coming. And I’m only young once, right? If I don’t chase after my dreams now, when will I? A burning building, shrill screams, music to my ears. I thought I wouldn’t feel any regrets, but even when you’re gone, I still hear your words. Maybe I am truly an ungrateful petulant child. Maybe you were right. There is nothing in this world more frightening than that. But at least I’m free. Afterword: The chains of my sins are heavy at my feet, One step after the other, Keep going, going, going. Word spreads quickly, Town catches fast, It was a midnight murder, A sublime, macabre blaze. Some called it beautiful, Others, utterly deplorable. Don’t they know? Anger is the motivator, I am the gun. But now I’m before the crowds, And you can barely see the farm work in my hands, The callouses have smoothed out, Countless faces, rough seas of crowds, I’ve never seen so many roses after I’ve bowed. The game is over, And I have won, I’ve proven them wrong, and I hope they know. Wherever they may be, burning or lounging, At least they can look down and see, That I was worth more than that life. And if I burn in the afterlife, I fear none, I fear not the torture nor the pain, Eternal damnation nor the demons, For I’ve already burned all of mine, To the ground Tanya Carlos, 17 is a hesitant dreamer from Rizal, Philippines. She writes to let out her feelings, calm her unease, and go somewhere far from the present. Beyond writing, she deeply enjoys reading, editing videos, or watching hours upon hours of film.

by Sophia Falber The nukes whisper sweet nothings into each other’s ears. But what will they do, when they realize Power is the mistress of them both? If I can’t have you, no one else can. Mutually assured destruction. Civilization is just a stage for their epic love story. Romeo and Juliet pale in comparison. Humanity are just actors in their play, dutifully playing their parts convinced they clasp the pen that writes this tragedy. All so they can sleep soundly underneath flags that snuff the brilliant light of the sun and the sky. I’ll tell you how to survive, play the role you’re assigned. And at night, when you fear gunmen hide your head underneath your pillows and shut your eyes. Surely, bullets can’t travel through cotton. Sophia Falber is interested in all the weird and wonderful ways words work, regardless of the medium. Sophia's writing focuses on everything from the commonplace to the macabre and the absurd. Her writing has appeared in Hawai'i Pacific Review, Quibble Review, and Aster Lit. Sophia is editor-in-chief of FLARE: The Flagler Review. To get updates on Sophia's writing journey follow her Instagram @sophiajfalber

by Lily Scheckner Cracks in the sidewalk form a starry divide Shadow (as in, a reflection in concrete) Cosmology (or, study of universes) Parallel with cosmetology, which is A poor man’s comparison, I know But you aren’t paid for The catalog: doe eyes, string waist A disjointed sphinx with legs Stepping on dictionaries, spilling ink You’re on a green juice path For days, years Attracting freckled pigeons While someone gets out a camera Mythology is learned, earned Preserved in time With Atlas muscles, lingerie, and With expectations of glory Weighed on Moon dimes, tossed in the Echoing fountain for the forefathers’ Silver scales, scale Back your jukebox expectation to choose Judgment Be fed to the dogs or decide To sheath your wings Some are stone, yours are Where the clavicles are Using perfume to mask The shame of flat-footed dancers But we are The ostriches, the matriarchs, Buried in window shopping and Avoiding the taboos Like peeled bananas and Unearthing the statue Dusting you off Starting over, an instant reinvention In a cracked sidewalk reflection For the gods and the men And the stars Lily Scheckner is a high school student and poetry & fiction writer residing in Silver Spring, Maryland. In her free time, she enjoys earl gray tea, vintage fashion, and listening to Sufjan Stevens. Lily was a finalist for the Montgomery County, MD Youth Poet Laureate and attended Interlochen Arts Camp, where she received a Fine Arts Award for Creative Writing.

by Sfarda L. Gül Needle & thread. Untouched vestal linen. Fingertips of diligence scribing mnemonics of red upon white like snow hugging rowan berries for warmth because one’s naked back beseeches knowledge the rusk-dry pages of history books cannot impart & where did it go? Where did I put this calcified needle, this fossilized mortar, the petrified pestle, my teacup of toadstools? Those flimsy pages of mortal histories dry as rusk would burn so easily but I live where soil tastes like honesty so I sit sewing this linen with diligently bleeding fingertips & this is flesh & veins are twisted storytellers & I am undying. A writer and artist since her early childhood brought up in a Police State, Sfarda L. Gül’s (alias) creative focus hones in on the macabre and introspective, the grotesque and juxtaposing—a deconstruction of social ideology and human suffering influenced by her upbringing, historically erased mixed ethnicity, and dark-sided emotional disposition. When not engaging in art, Sfarda is enthralled in ethnography, linguistics, and social activism aiding to uplift ethnic and queer minorities of her native SWANA and Eastern Europe.