—zine prestige

the sky never ends - mars mo

no one in the waiting room cares about who you used to be.
the four blank walls lined with grey metal chairs provide you with one task. one shared goal. there is no receptionist. a mug of black coffee sits on the varnished oak table, full. cold. there isn’t even a doctor.
no god to pray to, yet we plead anyways.
the room is filled with loud conversation. gossip sessions, soul crushing confessions. small talk. from cell phones, from the elderly, from the tired teen, from the mother. everyone talks (just not to you.) about everything and nothing at all.a blank slate of a man stares at you in the reflection of the waxed floor tiles. eyes with no colour a smile absent of lines and eyebrows that never move. frozen and immortalized in its worst form. a blank canvas. an untouched paintbrush. inexperienced, unused, unwilling. a permanent state of limbo. of perfection, or rather, the absence of imperfections. a missed opportunity, a story gone unsaid. of (being) the tick of the clock and (nothing.) else. there is no one here who can tell who you're supposed to be (other than you.)waiting for one hour becomes three. a day wasted becomes a year.
suddenly you're sixteen with no dumb teenage stories to prove it. your face feels like plastic. the overpowering scent of hand sanitizer in the room begins to smell like what you once were (what you still are. freshly washed green apples. moldy expired bread. homemade hot chocolate.) it hurts. the room is freezing. you don't cry anymore, but you kind of wish you still did. the days pass with no notice. the clock reaches 12 again and again and again and again and a note on a Walmart receipt given to you on a July day of some year ago sits heavy on your lap. be wrong. then be wrong again. then be a little less wrong. then get over it. or kill yourself. you still have time. -from Waterloo
you've never been wrong. or right. you've never really been anything at all. you've never been to Waterloo.“hey. if you get this…i'm not there anymore. this motel stinks, but i’m only a ten minute ride out. the moon is beautiful tonight, just like you said. …i’ll see you on the other side. thanks, man.”

—best composition

- sophia bueskens-wong

—use of technique

diphylleia gray (or a blue child's favorite flower) - anni p.s.

sitting in the cold, bed sores, stone faced
when you're all alone, it gets hard to breathe
sparkles in the air, girlhood and glitter
you look at where you withered
no one's there, you still breathein and out, like you're running out of time
when innocence ran out, you were right on time
glass hopes, a distant thunderstorm
a child in blue, glued to a radio
the ghost of you running close byif I start to wilt
don't even try to mend it
you're colder than ice, soevery time we touch
I'm underwater
and you don't understand, noevery morning you wake up in sweat
no open windows, no childhood bed
with no sunlight on your eyelids
with dust on your hands
did you ever reach them out?communicating secretly, red eyes, dried up shore
all alone, no one knocks on your door
if I reach out tenderly
will I feel your heavenly
or is it buried too deep down?if I'm made of glass
you run like water
surface cut and you seep right inglass flower, fragile whispers
"I don't break under any touch
it's usually just me”

—theme interpretation

- ferretramblings

i trust you.
that’s what i say now, instead of ‘are you sure?’ or ‘i don’t think..’, the words falling from my lips into your moon-kissed hair, seeping through your scalp.and the strangest part is, i mean it. even when i’ve been proven wrong before. ‘proven wrong’ might not be the best phrase- it evokes an image of you standing over me triumphantly, victorious in your deception. instead, you’re usually trembling in a dark room, flinching when you open your curtains and allow the light to touch you.but the fact of the matter is, you do open your curtains. maybe if i’d prodded a little more earlier, you wouldn’t have had to stay in the dark for so long. or maybe you would’ve sewn your curtains shut and it would’ve taken even longer to get them open.
it hurts, of course, knowing opening your curtains isn’t in my hands. knowing that from somewhere in my jumbled-up brain i can pull out the right and wrong words to convince you of diametrically opposite concepts, but there’s no instruction manual telling me which is which. all i can do is watch and wait, because it’s your life, getting better and worse, fortunately and unfortunately.what do i mean when i say i trust you, then? it’s not entirely a function of the accuracy of your preceding statement.
f(x)=y, where x stands for what you’ve said and y stands for how true it is. but no matter what value this function holds, my answer is the same, partly because this function doesn’t even exist, because it can be 0 and 100 at the same time, traversing all the shades of grey there are between true and false, between your curtains and the window.
but mostly because no matter what, i trust you.i trust that even if you’re keeping something from me, you’ll tell me eventually. i trust that even if you’re lying, this simply isn’t a moment you can tell the truth.
‘can’ isn’t about physical ability; it’s about possibility. and in that moment, the complex calculation of all the possibilities always boils down to one: the choice you make, influenced by all the homes and headaches hurled around by that hurricane in your head.i trust that, when the time comes, you’ll open your curtains. it has to be your choice and no one else’s. no matter how much i want to live your life for you sometimes, i can’t. i wouldn’t be leading you into the light; i’d be suffocating you in my shadow. you have to drive your own consciousness. i can provide snacks and rest stops and music for the road. i can be your pit crew and companion. but i can’t wrench the wheel from your hands. my literal ability to do it does not translate into an easy willingness. that’s how a can becomes can’t.i love you so very much, and that’s why i can still say i trust you. trust is a beautiful yet fragile thing, easily broken. the cynic in my head argues that they can’t even count the number of times we should’ve been looking at ourselves reflected in the pieces of my trust on the floor. it should be lying at your feet, having shattered into shrapnel along the way, managing to make its way behind my ribs.
at that moment, would it matter to me that its shards reached your ribs too, sticking out in the same position from the opposite direction? would we lean down and clean up in silence, only talking later as we gently applied the contents of our first-aid kit to our wounds? would we put all those delicate pieces back together?
i believe, in my best moments, that the answer to all of those questions is one word- simple, uncomplicated, and unentangled in the mess we’ve made- yes.but i suppose i won’t know till i live it, and i haven’t had to yet, because every time you knock it off the bedside table or i accidentally place it in a precarious position after cleaning it, it lands on the floor unharmed. we put it back, and it stays out in the open, not rotting away in some locked cabinet. would it be safer there? i suppose some would argue that. but then it wouldn’t be able to sparkle in the light every time you opened your curtains.
i think the love in our home (not just house) acts as insulation, padding the floor and giving my trust a fighting chance. i don’t think that that insulation is tearing anytime soon, which lets me summon three small words from my pocket every time you need it: i trust you.i imagine those words defying their size, growing into a coat that keeps you from shivering as you sit on the floor. cold and dark go together, as do light and warmth. but it isn’t entirely dark in that room, because your coat, stitched out of three precious words, glows a little. not nearly enough to illuminate your surroundings, but enough to remind you that there is more than this. enough to remind you of what lies beyond the curtains you stitched long ago out of desperation. but maybe we can get you out of desperation.i know what you’re scared of.i convinced myself a long time ago that if i couldn’t see the dust and insects until i opened the curtains, the light was creating the problem. much better to sit in the darkness, i decided. but after you sat with me long enough, doing that magical act of not-leaving, sometimes soothing, sometimes simply staying, i opened my curtains and understood what you were trying to tell me: the light wasn’t the problem. all it did was let me finally see what i was working with and fighting against. after i opened my curtains, the light streaming through wasn’t the only thing your trust caught. it caught the fragile hope in my eyes too.
i wish i could say my curtains stayed open, but there have been bad days since. still, not in a single one did you leave my side.and i do just that with you: the magical act of not-leaving, sometimes soothing, sometimes simply staying. as the night grows long, i know you will open your curtains soon to let the moon in. my trust will glimmer on our table in its light as well as that of the fragile hope in your eyes.i trust you.

—emotionally charged

the sky never ends - mars mo

no one in the waiting room cares about who you used to be.
the four blank walls lined with grey metal chairs provide you with one task. one shared goal. there is no receptionist. a mug of black coffee sits on the varnished oak table, full. cold. there isn’t even a doctor.
no god to pray to, yet we plead anyways.
the room is filled with loud conversation. gossip sessions, soul crushing confessions. small talk. from cell phones, from the elderly, from the tired teen, from the mother. everyone talks (just not to you.) about everything and nothing at all.a blank slate of a man stares at you in the reflection of the waxed floor tiles. eyes with no colour a smile absent of lines and eyebrows that never move. frozen and immortalized in its worst form. a blank canvas. an untouched paintbrush. inexperienced, unused, unwilling. a permanent state of limbo. of perfection, or rather, the absence of imperfections. a missed opportunity, a story gone unsaid. of (being) the tick of the clock and (nothing.) else. there is no one here who can tell who you're supposed to be (other than you.)waiting for one hour becomes three. a day wasted becomes a year.
suddenly you're sixteen with no dumb teenage stories to prove it. your face feels like plastic. the overpowering scent of hand sanitizer in the room begins to smell like what you once were (what you still are. freshly washed green apples. moldy expired bread. homemade hot chocolate.) it hurts. the room is freezing. you don't cry anymore, but you kind of wish you still did. the days pass with no notice. the clock reaches 12 again and again and again and again and a note on a Walmart receipt given to you on a July day of some year ago sits heavy on your lap. be wrong. then be wrong again. then be a little less wrong. then get over it. or kill yourself. you still have time. -from Waterloo
you've never been wrong. or right. you've never really been anything at all. you've never been to Waterloo.“hey. if you get this…i'm not there anymore. this motel stinks, but i’m only a ten minute ride out. the moon is beautiful tonight, just like you said. …i’ll see you on the other side. thanks, man.”

—best line

diphylleia gray (or a blue child's favorite flower) - anni p.s.

glass flower, fragile whispers
"I don't break under any touch
it's usually just me”

—zine prestige

what i'm trying to say is - elizabeth rotunno

i hope we fall out of touch.//not to reconnect six years later and worse than ever. i don’t want to see you seeing me in apocalyptically grey stockings or put-myself-in-this-box brown eyeshadow. i don’t want to wear burst-your-bubble(gum) lipstick anymore. i don’t want to imagine what you’d have to say. remind me: have i ever told you that f-a-t-e means fairies in italian? i know i haven’t. i know how much you’d like that. on days when i remember, i think of crinkly candy wrappers as small deliverances, pixels instead of pixies dotting my vision and synthetic joy pumping through a latex heart. i know i never told you, but i am so scared i have plastic instead of flesh inside, so scared of the way you have favorites like others have a pulse: chartreuse, skittles, crochet, shitty chevrolets, //not me// the smell of copper, peter-pan collars, //not me// the way our fourth grade teachers pronounced the word “nuclear,” //never me.// i keep working myself up into these stomach-knot paradoxes, breaking into sweaty metaphors— sometimes, i want to press through doors like raw knee-skin on a blood burn presses itself against the fiber of my jeans; isn’t that stupid? you’d think that was stupid. but i never feel more urgent than when i have scabbed knees, than when i’m reminded there’s something bright red in me. i think that might be my favorite. i think i won’t wear jeans anymore. ( i don’t want you to find out, you’ll be so disappointed). the truth is i’m miserable and i always cut my hair too short for buns but too long for butterfly clips. the truth is i kept the fabric samples—the ones in baby plastic bags—from the clothes you bought so that i could find a favorite color. the truth is you’re better at polaroids and i’m better at pigeon-holes. the truth is i won’t tell you that i hope we never speak again. what i’m trying to say is //you just kind of piss me off, i think.

—best composition

pin pricks - karmin loy

—theme interpretation

maker o' mine - riley s.

oh, maker o’ mine!
i am your life become art.
i am nothing if i am not
exactly who you want me to be.what am i otherwise?
a frankensteinian hodgepodge?
a haphazard record of failed attempts?
the leftovers of what could have been?i cannot distinguish where
skin separates from silk.
my seams are inconclusive.you have sewn in me
fine foreign feelings,
an alien skin graft,
non-native to my fabric.stick, prod, possess
my innermost stitching.
your thoughts linger within,
far past tissue and sinew.do what you please,
but don’t you dare
leave me again,don’t you dare
leave these scraps of self
to rot in some dusty bin.i do not know if i can
sew myself back to wholeness.

—use of technique

the stone - alec sutherland

Six months sat before us
like an unturned stone
days not spent in
the canyons and valleys of your arms
the delicate copper sunset of your five o’ clock shadow
the car exhaust rumble of your laugh
pouring out over my tongue in waves of blue honey
my hands seemed smaller without yours around:
the grooves in your palm a race track for my fingertipsI thought of the night you left:
a hot cup of august gone cold,
the bitterness seeping through my days
and the want for the feel of your heatI thought i might never see you again
and it for the best
chapters ripped from a book
but read and reread on dark nights by candlelightto see you again
after such a long short time
like a second strike of lightning
at the place where you left my heart
I stood alone
and turned the stone

—emotionally charged

what i'm trying to say is - elizabeth rotunno

i hope we fall out of touch.//not to reconnect six years later and worse than ever. i don’t want to see you seeing me in apocalyptically grey stockings or put-myself-in-this-box brown eyeshadow. i don’t want to wear burst-your-bubble(gum) lipstick anymore. i don’t want to imagine what you’d have to say. remind me: have i ever told you that f-a-t-e means fairies in italian? i know i haven’t. i know how much you’d like that. on days when i remember, i think of crinkly candy wrappers as small deliverances, pixels instead of pixies dotting my vision and synthetic joy pumping through a latex heart. i know i never told you, but i am so scared i have plastic instead of flesh inside, so scared of the way you have favorites like others have a pulse: chartreuse, skittles, crochet, shitty chevrolets, //not me// the smell of copper, peter-pan collars, //not me// the way our fourth grade teachers pronounced the word “nuclear,” //never me.// i keep working myself up into these stomach-knot paradoxes, breaking into sweaty metaphors— sometimes, i want to press through doors like raw knee-skin on a blood burn presses itself against the fiber of my jeans; isn’t that stupid? you’d think that was stupid. but i never feel more urgent than when i have scabbed knees, than when i’m reminded there’s something bright red in me. i think that might be my favorite. i think i won’t wear jeans anymore. ( i don’t want you to find out, you’ll be so disappointed). the truth is i’m miserable and i always cut my hair too short for buns but too long for butterfly clips. the truth is i kept the fabric samples—the ones in baby plastic bags—from the clothes you bought so that i could find a favorite color. the truth is you’re better at polaroids and i’m better at pigeon-holes. the truth is i won’t tell you that i hope we never speak again. what i’m trying to say is //you just kind of piss me off, i think.

—best line

fabric - rhyme miles pelczar

slowly, softly, the goddess of love and chaos feeds
the dark, broken, trickster world
he is too busy with his thoughts to notice
(little does he know that the sun and the rain erode all chains, eventually.)

—zine prestige

girl - rhyme pelczar

she walked with whimsy through meadows and forests and marshes
the girl,
the girl of starlight and rainbows
her family adored her
her “friends” deplored her
she noticed neither and loved herselfshe skipped with self-confidence into a new life, a new school
the girl,
the girl of moonbeams and flowerfalls
adults mistrusted her
peers deconstructed her
she would never see how much it broke her or how much she learned to hate herselfwhen she died, it was gradual, not grotesque or violent
the girl,
the girl of shadowsilk and whisperwind
it wasn’t until she was gone
that he realized she hadn’t existed for a long timehe treads with caution through the gray of a life unlit
the boy,
the boy of cobblestones and nightshades
he sees all and knows all because he has to
he doesn’t remember what it’s like not to be awoken to the world, and to himself
he searches for wonder in every broken crack, crevice, and carapace
he struggles to find it
some days, he longs for her
some days, he despises her
some days, he wishes she never existed
and some days, he wishes he never did
but he knows he cannot be that girl anymore
and so he lives that she might live through him

—use of technique

disorganized system - mars mo

disorganized system
dissociative episodes are not as bad as they are made out to be.
Well– okay, I guess they are, but I mean, they’re a way for the body to protect us!
dissociation ruined my life.
no, thats not true, its just been a long week
It’s not like one has much of a say in the matter in the first place.
Dissociation is comforting. Mildly inconvenient? horrible . i wouldnt remember Necessary.
“Sorry, I must not have gotten enough sleep last night…uhm, what were you saying?”Identity is so stupid! How am I supposed to know who I am if I’m never alone here?
The concept of identity is subjective anyway. Focus on viewing yourself as your own person.
best to not think about it much though
who really knows who they are anyway ?
people who didn’t turn out like this, probably.
Who am I? (what is that / Knitting supplies! / since when did we knit / Since fourth grade? / oh )
“Hm? We really like– what? Oh, sorry, I meant I. I really am tired, huh? Anyways, I–”disorder? no one’s surprised. looks like you were right.
i usually am. it seems like a pretty logical explanation, wouldn’t you agree?
…I don’t appreciate the condescension, but I suppose so.
i just cant believe its official now
Well, now that we’re, like, labelled with this list of symptoms…now what?
I…We don’t know. We don’t know. (That’s okay. How’s Saturday at 3 PM?)
“Are we dressed right? It’s just talk therapy. Do we think it’s a little too– okay, okay, let’s go!”

—theme interpretation

all the girls - jina jeon

I pulled myself tight, snipped off each trailing thread
wound my skin around itself until my lungs pressed together
I cut and pasted bits and pieces to create a new face
sewed it on and backstitched to keep it firmly in place.
I swallowed all the people that I have been before,
the artist, the muse
the lover, the arsonist
zipped them up inside the cocoon I made of my flesh.
But how can this be? I am unraveling,
spinning and spinning until I am naked and shivering
exposed, my bones spilling out, chunks of flesh weaved in between
and in every piece I am glinting, reflecting the girls that I have devoured
the writer, the poet
the musician, the painter
she’s five and then ten then fifteen then nineteen
bleeding through the seams, twenty pairs of eyes bursting forth
I pull myself tighter but they’re breathing, lungs swelling, expanding through my veins
and when I’m a heap of string on the floor they crawl out,
pointing and laughing as if to say nice try,
did I think I could escape them by stuffing them inside?
And don’t you know you never grow out of yourself—
you just grow around all the girls you have been?

—emotionally charged

all the girls - jina jeon

I pulled myself tight, snipped off each trailing thread
wound my skin around itself until my lungs pressed together
I cut and pasted bits and pieces to create a new face
sewed it on and backstitched to keep it firmly in place.
I swallowed all the people that I have been before,
the artist, the muse
the lover, the arsonist
zipped them up inside the cocoon I made of my flesh.
But how can this be? I am unraveling,
spinning and spinning until I am naked and shivering
exposed, my bones spilling out, chunks of flesh weaved in between
and in every piece I am glinting, reflecting the girls that I have devoured
the writer, the poet
the musician, the painter
she’s five and then ten then fifteen then nineteen
bleeding through the seams, twenty pairs of eyes bursting forth
I pull myself tighter but they’re breathing, lungs swelling, expanding through my veins
and when I’m a heap of string on the floor they crawl out,
pointing and laughing as if to say nice try,
did I think I could escape them by stuffing them inside?
And don’t you know you never grow out of yourself—
you just grow around all the girls you have been?

—best line

polished - carter hazard

I don’t know what I look like
without pretending to be seen.

—zine prestige

"can you help me put this on?" - fern weimer

a zipper tracing up the back
a clasp closed comfortably between the shoulders
a satin bow looped at the neck
the proximity of deft fingers
gently brushing hair aside
careful not to pinch or prod
as they put you together piece by piece
and they ask you
is this okay? can you breathe? is it in the right place?
and of course it’s just right
after so many mornings, it’s down to a science
nestled in your blind spots—
the delicate cord of depending
to fix what you cannot reach with your own hands.

—best composition

where warmth rests - karin bartkova

—use of technique

I ENDURE WITH A TENSE PULSE - taylor elise colimore

—theme interpretation

cornicello (corno portafortuna) - toni della fata

You wrap an arm around the back of my chair,
Pour the wine that you spent months making, from the grapes in your garden,
down my throat,
Serve me gnocchi, hand-made from a recipe you once whispered into my ear, now forgotten.Your place at the table, (never at the head, always to the right),
Sits empty,
Your dinner, gone cold, despite a dining room warmed by woodsmoke and conversation.You tighten the necklace around my neck,
The one you brought with you, across an ocean, fifty years ago,
Cornicello hanging heavy at the hollow of my throat,
laden with guilt,
as I try to speak a language I’ve forgotten.I wince as I try to string along a sentence,
as if each mispronounced syllable doesn’t break Your heart in half,
a good luck charm that stopped being lucky eight years ago,
metal oxidized and tarnished,I’ll wear it anyway,
Your love chained to mine.

—emotionally charged

"can you help me put this on?" - fern weimer

a zipper tracing up the back
a clasp closed comfortably between the shoulders
a satin bow looped at the neck
the proximity of deft fingers
gently brushing hair aside
careful not to pinch or prod
as they put you together piece by piece
and they ask you
is this okay? can you breathe? is it in the right place?
and of course it’s just right
after so many mornings, it’s down to a science
nestled in your blind spots—
the delicate cord of depending
to fix what you cannot reach with your own hands.

—best line

love again - jina jeon

I trace a line from your ear’s shell and down to your blunt chin
letting my fingers slip against the hills and dips—
the topography of your face.