The Psithurism of a Silent Voice

Once upon a time, I was evaporating. Anorexia tightened its grasp like a gaseous cage, and merciless bullying oxidized whatever confidence I harbored. Anorexia was a thief, stealing my health, while the taunts of my peers violently blazed my head like slashes that bifurcated a human body. Moments when my voice felt astray, writing replenished my sinful craving for a warm hug. In the sunny Dilmun of Bahrain, prospects for young women to write are scarce, not without cuffing boundaries. There is no room for vulnerability, for synonyms that tatter crucifixes. My affinity with words became my rebellion. My words had nowhere to go. I filled empty papers with the fortes I couldn’t utter—the laceration, the vex, the woe.My words were raw. My words were rare-rare as a sunflower in the desert, rare as a snowbird in hell, fragments of emotion stuffed into letters, entailing the chaos within me. I spun my intimate hell into metaphors. My words became my sanctuary, where I could exist without shrewd gumption. If the world refused to listen, I would make it. In a desert where subverted young women descry solace, I vowed not to be one of them, submitting essays to national platforms, refusing to let topography define the reach of my voice. With every recognized piece, I reclaimed a stolen fragment of myself. I was no longer the girl they whispered about in hallways. I was a young writer. Each acceptance, each acknowledgment, was an affirmation that my story mattered.Writing made me question my dogma. Why do I handcuff myself when I crave freedom? Through the English alphabet, I found domination. Writing gave me back to myself. It taught me that agony makes me a mortal human and showed me that words bear the capability to heal.
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Written by Zainab Khamis.
Zainab Mohammed Khamis is a 16-year-old high school junior living in a rural village in Bahrain. Zainab speaks 5 languages: English, Arabic, Spanish, French, and Turkish.
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Refuge

“I want you to sit with patients during mealtimes,” the director tells me.She is severely dressed in a black skirt- suit, the edge blunt across her shins, matching the blunt edge of her hair. She wants me to prevent patients from using the bathroom for vomiting or food flushing.When I ask how I am going to stop grown women with eating disorders from using the bathroom, she is vague: “Try to engage the patients in meaningful dialogue.”At twenty, I’m not sure I have had any meaningful dialogue. I’ve had a lot of deep drunken discussions in dorm rooms, but I come away unable to explain what we even talked about. There has also been groping and various states of undress. I walk away from both with questions: Was that meaningful dialogue? Was that sex? Look at this woman with her perfect hairdo and expensive suit: She has no questions; she has already decided everything.There are four patients—two with anorexia, one with bulimia, and one with overeating. Unlike the director, the patients are not vague. They are vulgar, calling each other names that make me blush. They laugh maniacally when I try to dissuade Lori, with anorexia, from the bathroom. Lori has downy hair covering her skeletal body. She barely looks at me, concentrating only on food, mixing her yogurt forty times before bringing a small spoonful to her mouth.The bathroom is her refuge—her only alone space in this mental hospital where she is constantly watched. It’s where she flushes food she conceals in her pockets. These are small victories for her, dodging calories like bullets.I ate a thick bagel this morning, cream cheese piled like whipped cream. The food is my reward for getting up early to catch the bus for this volunteer position. I regret it, but not because of calories. It is a cement lump in my belly as I monitor breakfast, a physical reminder of my difference from these women. I want to relate. Have I ever felt uncomfortable in my skin? Have I ever needed refuge?Books were my refuge in childhood, escape from the small town and its inadvertent meanness, and the mental illness touching my life. But like most refuge, it was temporary and inadequate.There are monthly meetings at McLean. I sit with my breakfast plate and listen to the speakers. Sometimes they give talks about diseases and pathophysiology, and I’m grateful to have help with my psychology classes. But when staff discuss patient behavior, I’m uncomfortable. Invariably, a discussion develops over some ‘odd’ patient behavior. The staff will discuss the behavior and ways to ‘handle’ it.There is this winking, this implied knowing among the staff. They inadvertently include me in this group of those that know. It’s a group to which I have paid no dues and filled out no application, but they assume I belong.I’m a student at a prestigious university, and in a few years I could be staff here, but I know I don’t belong. I could. But I don’t want to leave this liminal space I occupy. I feel tugging from both sides, and while it’s tempting to choose my side and be certain, I don’t want that certainty. Because with certainty, you forget. You forget where you’ve been— literally and metaphorically—and you kid yourself into believing it could never happen to you.Lori makes friends with the one patient with bulimia, Anna. It’s an improbable friendship. Anna is a day program patient allowed to go home at night, while the others are confined to the grounds. Anna is bubbly; before she became ill, she was the life of the party.Anna sneaks Lori off the grounds once a week. She offers me a ride to the bus stop.
“I’m taking Lori out,” she confides with a twinkle in her eye.I consider turning them in, but I can’t think of any harm it can do. As we drive through the hospital grounds, Anna calls, “Lori, keep your head down. I’ll tell you when we’re out.” I duck, too, worried I may be caught by staff.That’s when I notice salt and pepper shakers tucked into the map pocket of the door. I feel stunned at this stark reminder of Anna’s illness. I imagine her binging on food, stuffing herself to bursting, then leaning out to vomit.Lori is now sitting up in the back seat, her skeletal fingers gripping the chair back, looking so fragile from malnutrition, a bump in the road might shatter her.I am glad I did this, that I let them help me and reverse our roles. But the car begins to feel like prison; I have a pang of fear I’ll be stuck forever. I stumble out as soon as Anna pulls up to the bus stop. The air outside is clean and cool. There are trees, sun, and a concrete bench, and when sparrows playfully swoop past my head, something soars inside me: I am free! But what refuge is this bench, the shadow of the sprawling mental hospital moving over it every day?My experiences at McLean lurk in the shadows of my waking days and creep into my dreams. I feel tenuous. I should probably be most afraid of becoming mentally ill. But instead, I find myself more afraid of the opposite. It would be so easy for me to click my tongue at patients like the staff do, confident in their health.But I find no refuge in false certainty. None of us knows anything. We don’t know what happens when we die, and the very definition of faith proves we don’t. We don’t know if God exists, we don’t know if the dead walk among the living, and the line distinguishing sanity from insanity is a tightrope. We are not terminally sane surrounded by the terminally ill; we are each one of us walking a tightrope strung across an abyss whose bottom is unknowable.
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Written by Melissa Rosato.
Melissa Rosato is a physician, writer, bicyclist, and mother. Her nonfiction chapbook “We are all Patients” was published by Variant Lit.
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In the Margins of a Home

We made sure that our water bottles were full, our phones were charged, our homework was done, and that we had used the bathroom. Because, once the library closed, my sister and I would begin the long night trek to a home that was not our home and we would be returning to a place that had no running water or electricity. No daily comforts to soothe the long day. We were squatters not on the street, but under someone else’s roof, and my mother had gotten into an argument with the home’s owner, so that meant the owner decided to promptly cut off the veins feeding the tumor that was a family of 5 that had been shoved into one room with two beds.My mother somehow believed that it was safer—but most importantly, cheaper—to leave her children under the same roof as an old guy with a gun collection and a weed garden in his backyard than a clean hotel room. She made daily promises that she was saving the money for a better home, a better life away from here. My sister and I believed her.While my mother got to stay in her patients’ homes overnight as a caretaker for the elderly and my step-father and my younger half-sister got to sleep on a couch in our step-grandmother’s apartment, my sister and I were left with a mildewed room with the smell of weed, a clogged toilet, and holes in the floor. It was an existence in the margins.We would hear dinner plates clatter downstairs along with a T.V. playing one of the Rocky movies, along with occasional chatter and muffled arguments between the owner, his wife, and his son who had recently gotten out of jail and punched a hole into one of the doors downstairs.My sister and I were careful to not make loud footsteps or creak the bed when we lied down and waited for sleep to carry us to another day. We had to pretend that we did not exist and be like others who pretend to not exist in tents by train tracks, in cars by beaches, on park benches, or on cold concrete asphalt ground—sleeping in darkness, as silent as the dust that falls in empty houses.
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Written by Vannah Goze.
Vannah Goze is 45% artist, 33% writer, 12% carbon made from previously living organisms, 8%
milk tea, and 2% artificial flavoring and preservatives.
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A Definition of “Silence”

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “silence” as
1) the absence of sound or noise.Growing up, silence was an unwelcome companion—a void that grew monstrously in the gaps of my clumsy conversations. I did not have many friends, and I felt too shy to talk to people.“What are you reading?” asks someone at my church’s weekly children’s ministry event. He looks like a youth leader.“A Cartoon Guide to Quantum Mechanics,” I respond flatly and immediately return to my book.“Oh. Do you want to join the other kids and play ping-pong?” He shifts from one foot to the other, picking at his nails.I pause and look up. “No. Thank you.” I continue reading. He stands there for a while, his thoughts unspoken.“Okay... cool.”He leaves, and I am now alone. Good. Being alone is fine—as long as I have my books.A nine-year-old homeschooler’s definition of “silence” might look like:
1) the awkward absence of sound or noise, usually indicating discomfort or dislike.Reading books became my escape, a way to fill those voids with streams of life and adventure. The biting arguments between my parents, the teasing from my siblings that cut too deep, and the all-too-familiar loneliness I felt would all disappear as I devoured stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Great Expectations, and The Count of Monte Cristo. No longer was I just a nine-year-old home-schooled girl, but an accomplice to children who saved the world, slaying six-headed dragons, getting lost in a wardrobe and—“How’d you do on the test?” asks my math classmate.I blink, suddenly pulled back from Narnia to the rigid plastic chair and harsh fluorescent light in my classroom. What had I scored again? A 16/25 on a national math contest for 8th graders and below. Is that score enough? I don’t want others to think I’m bad at math. How do I respond? How can I hide my stupidity? My brain twists itself into knots, fumbling for something clever that will mask the inferiority I feel. It gives up, so I shyly avoid my classmate’s questioning stare. Instead, I look out the window, concentrating on the stormy nimbus clouds plodding across the sky. Clouds. An elongated sigh from the sky. I let out a sigh of my own, wishing I could be left alone to finish my book. My classmate awkwardly waits for my response, and the silence between us stretches thin like ice, threatening to crack under the weight of any sound. She finally says, “Oh. It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” and walks away. The weight of carrying a conversation slips from my shoulders, a thousand unspoken worries flutter into the air and disappear, and I pick up my book again.To me, genres did not matter—if it was a book, it served as a makeshift tent for solace. I would read late into the night snuggled under my blanket, flashlight in hand, flipping page after page in the dark.“You’re ruining your eyesight,” my mother complains as she tosses my library books in the return pile.“But I have to know what happens next!” I protest, hoping she’ll change her mind about returning what she calls ‘junk books,” books that have too “flashy” or “fantastical” covers. “You should write your own books instead. That would be a lot more productive.”“Do you like writing?” a girl asks, peering over my shoulder. I set aside The Mysterious Benedict Society and look up from my velvety patch of grass underneath a willow tree.“Yes, do you?” I respond.She grins. “Yes! Do you want to write together?”I nod, smiling. I had found my first friend who loved words as much as I did.My journey as a writer, an aspiring professional author, started with retelling my favorite stories. The Ugly Duckling became The Ugly Truck, and Romana & Beezus became Grace & Caleb, starring me and my younger brother.When my older sisters pointed out that I needed original ideas to be a “successful” writer, I decided to prove them right.“This past Sunday, someone wrote bad words on the church walls. There’s an investigation to find the culprit and fix the walls,” my father reads from a double-sided piece of paper titled Church Newspaper. He squints, staring at me. The ceiling suddenly becomes my new point of interest.“Grace, did you write this newspaper entry?” my mother asks as she ladles handmade dumplings for dinner.I meekly nod. “I wrote it with my friend,” I say while I twiddle my thumbs, hoping their judgment won’t sting too badly.“Goodness, it even has jokes. ‘Why did the cookie visit the doctor?... Because it felt crumbly,’” my father chuckles. “Well, I find it very creative. Keep up the good work.”I found greater satisfaction from writing than reading. The quiet was no longer an emptiness overrun by restless thoughts that took control over my mind and body like an unrelenting rash, but a soft hum of stillness and peace. My writer friend and I wrote alongside each other, finding a gentle rhythm in the scratching of our pens.An eleven-year-old home-schooler’s definition of “silence” might include:
1) the comfortable absence of sound or noise, usually indicating peace.With my friend’s encouragement, I submitted my short story about endangered wolves to my library’s short story contest.I ended up winning.But comfortable silence did not last forever. With COVID came sickness, separation from my friends, and loneliness. With sickness came death, and with death came a sickening, eternal silence from my grandmother. I no longer heard the crinkling of the milk candy that she would always sneak into my hand whenever my mother wasn’t looking. Every sound of life was replaced with a hollowing silence at funerals—the funeral of my grandmother, my friend’s father, and the family friends who I had never even talked to before. Funerals came and went, marked by an aching quiet I could not fill.The Book Thief portrays Death as a lonely, sentimental collector of souls. Other stories portray Death as a hurricane that sweeps fragile, mortal shells into an unknown land. But to me, Death was only supposed to target old people. I remember peering over the polished box of mahogany at the funeral of my friend’s father. I remember the ghostly pallor of his young face, stripped of life. I remember being proven wrong. Death does not discriminate.A twelve-year-old home-schooler’s definition may also include:
1) a reminder of endings—what was, what could have been, and what never would be.Perhaps the most painful thing about death is the silence that follows it. The absence of recognition. The lack of a name. The quiet of those who never mattered enough to be mourned. I grieved for my grandmother, my friend’s father, and even for the countless people I barely knew. In those moments, I slipped through the hands of time, suspended in sorrow, no longer able to write in peace. Silence offered free space for thought, as well as for the torment of my mind. I needed something—anything—to eradicate the crawling sensation of a thousand tiny needles piercing my skin, the fear of death, loneliness, and inferiority that enveloped my brain and clouded my thoughts. So, I filled it with chatter and sound. Conversations felt clumsy, words spilled out too quickly—I feared what might slither into the spaces between them. Even after COVID, I had forgotten how to live at peace with silence.“Grace, you talk so fast. Listeners can’t process what you’re saying—you need to pause more,” advised my debate coach. “Grace, why’re you always listening to music?” asked my friend. My Spotify Wrapped reported that I listened to music for 46,834 minutes this year.In high school, I took an online English class with too many rules. For example, “only use three ‘be’ verbs per paragraph” and “do not use the same word to start a sentence.” Rules, rules, rules— they slowly stripped my freedom to read and write, leaving me as an empty vessel that only wrote what my teacher wanted.A fourteen-year-old home- schooler’ s definition of “silence” will definitely include:
1) a sign of abstaining from personal expression to meet societal expectations.“Are you taking English? How’s that going?” asks my childhood writer friend asks as we wait outside our community college classroom. For the first time in three years, we met each other again.“Yeah. It’s going well.” That’s a lie.“Do you still read or write for fun?” she asks curiously.‘’Not really. Only for class.”“Well, you should.”Her words linger in my mind like a soft echo, nudging me throughout the day. When I return home from school, the usual noise feels louder than usual- kitchen dishes clattering, my mom’s C-drama playing on the TV, my phone vibrating endlessly. I turn it off, and for the first time in three years, I look for a book on my shelf. Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I pull it out, brush away the fine layers of dust, and settle into my favorite corner of the couch. The noise fades into the background, and I’m left with only the rustling of pages and the steady beat of my own breath. The world feels softer, quieter, and a little more manageable. For the first time in three years, I read for fun. I close the book, and for the first time in three years, I pick up a pen and write for my own enjoyment.“Pass me the meat filling,” my dad instructs, as he kneads the dumpling wrapper into sharp creases. I do as he says. The kitchen lamp casts streaks of light onto my face, warming my cheeks. I bite into a dumpling, savoring the hot soup oozing from the tender dough. I relax in the quiet embrace of our family’s silence. Growing up, silence was an uncomfortable presence I couldn’t erase, no matter how much I tried to find the right words, or how much I blasted music into my ears. Silence once echoed what I lacked and what I could never attain. Yet, through reading and writing, I learned to acknowledge silence as a quiet space for peace and self-reflection.“How’s your AP Lang class?” my mom asks, pouring soy sauce over her dumplings.“Good.” It’s genuine this time. I smile and gaze at the wispy cirrus clouds in the sky. Clouds. An elongated sigh from the sky. I let out a sigh of my own, this time filled with something lighter.A final revision of a sixteen-year-old’s definition of “silence”:
1) the absence of sound or noise, a space where peace can be found.
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Written by Grace Ji.
Grace Ji is a listener, a writer who fills silence.
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Sermons at Dawn

When I was in highschool, I’d have to commute into Chicago by the blue line train every morning. And every morning, the preacher man would be there. I never learned his name, as it never came up in his daily ramblings but I also don’t think he particularly cared about himself. He dressed in a long black trench coat covered in dirt and dust soaked into the very fabric. I don’t remember his shoes, or his hair, but I remember his coat. It never moved, as though it was placed on him by God. Stuck in time. Every morning he would scream about how we were all going to hell, me especially for some reason. I suspect it had something to do with the pride pins I had on my backpack, but one can’t be sure.I grew to enjoy his ramblings. As inane as they were, they brought an element of chaos to such a routine aspect of my life. Yet in many ways his ramblings became routine in the chaos. I began to be able to predict where he was going on a particular morning just judging from the way his eyes would flicker at someone. He would’ve, if he hadn’t ended up in this life, become the kind of teacher who cold calls on the quietest person in class. I always was excited for my moment of his attention, as something about the crazed look in his eyes brought a delicious passion to my writing.One day, a man with a similarly crazed look stepped onto the train. He seemed to scan the car as his headphones blasted music so loudly into his ears I could hear it too. He stepped forward and took a seat across from me. Normally I am excited by these types of people, but this time something about him made even me nervous. I thought nothing of it, and continued writing in the notebook I carried with me. As I wrote I got the feeling that I was being stared at. It burned into me in a way I had yet to experience. When I looked up I found him staring. His eyes were wide with fury and a deep frown suffocated his face.“That’s my mother’s ring,” he growled at me.I let out a nervous laugh, “I found it at a store in the city, maybe we shop at the same places.”“That’s my mother’s ring,” he repeated more insistently.I didn’t respond. Unsure as to what I could possibly say to appease his line of questioning.“You stole my mom’s ring,” he yelled, his voice harsh, unflinching, “You fucking people are always stealing from us.”I could feel my breath hitch in my throat. What the fuck was I supposed to say to that? I turned my attention back to my journal hoping the act would get him to back off. It didn’t. Instead he took it as a sign to move into the open seat directly next to me. He continued yelling, now shaking furiously. Out of everyone in the train car not a single person made a move to stop him or to even speak up. It was clear, I was being left on my own to deal with this man. My hands began to shake as I held my journal. I tried to calm them, to show no reaction but the tears were already beginning to well in my eyes and I knew if he continued I’d have no chance to stop them. Stop after stop he rocked against me, screaming about how I was going to hell for stealing.As my stop drew closer, I worried how I was going to get up and leave. I was trapped in my seat by him as he was too large to sneak past. When my stop finally came, I quietly said, “This is my stop.”‘’No it’s not,” his voice snarled at me, a pleased look taking over his face.For a moment there was quiet, and I only then realized that the preacher had stopped yelling as well to observe the situation. As I counted my breaths and the seconds I was losing before the door would open and close, the preacher strode over, his coat finally in motion. He placed a hand on the shoulder of the man and in an eerie calm I had never seen from him, told him, “Son, this is not the way of God.”In a flash the man was up, nose to nose with the Preacher. Screaming about how he doesn’t know anything about God, and who was he to tell him what God believed. I saw my moment and ran. Tears flowing freely, not looking back, as the man continued to scream in the distance.The next morning, the man wasn’t there but the preacher was. He didn’t acknowledge me anymore than usual aside from a seemingly pointed verse about the Lord and leaning on his strength.When I went to college, I stopped taking the train and stopped seeing him. I’d wonder absentmindedly from time to time about if he still was yelling about God on that train or if my lack of appearance somehow made him disappear. As though my absence would make him sad.My answer came when I went back to my old highschool to shadow a teacher. As I got on the train to my usual car, there he was. I couldn’t help myself as he yelled about God. I thanked him for telling me to go to hell. I told him how happy I was to see him. It was the first time I’d ever seen him look shocked. He made sure to yell at me extra hard that morning.
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Written by Gray Dawson.
Gray Dawson is a 21 year old queer writer from Chicago who spends his time chasing new experiences in hopes of having more material.
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Namaste

Long ago, I worked at the second busiest Starbucks in the state of Colorado. It seemed like each morning every living soul passed through our humble drive- thru window. (The river Styx couldn’t hold a candle to our traffic.)With that being said, the entire mood and overall “flow” of employees relied on the one leading the shift. If our team leader was upbeat and positive, then we had a pretty smooth day. If the lead was a self-important bag of rotting taco meat, posing as a sentient bipedal supervisor, then it meant Chewy was working that day, and things didn’t go well.I shouldn’t be so mean when referring to Chewy. He was a decent enough fellow outside the workplace. But the moment he dawned a clipboard in his sweaty mits, he became this entitled micro-managing, ball of slime, whose hobbies included talking down to his coworkers, ridiculing their hardships, and manufacturing a not so deserved, over-inflated superiority complex.On the other end of the spectrum you had Phil, who was a delight in every sense of the word. Whenever Phil would lead a shift, things always went well. He was fun, energetic, enthusiastic, and kind, the whole package of what you could want in a superior. He was also an aspiring yoga instructor, and as part of his training to obtain his teaching certification, had to hold several volunteer classes.Once a week, he would treat all of us hard-working baristas to a free, one- hour yoga class. This class was designed to stretch all the primary muscles that you would find overworked in your average barista: the lower back due to slouching, the core, from dealing with stress, and of course the all-important relief to the constant wrist pain known only as Caramel Macchi-itis.One night just before a session, I felt a very troubling amount of turbulence building up within my belly. This discomfort was a common thing that I dealt with, not because of any underlying condition, but because I was naturally a very gaseous person.At dusk, we met inside of a rented office space. The furniture was removed and e-battery powered candles lit the room.All of us Starbucks folk formed a circle within the space, with Phil in the middle instructing. That night we worked on several poses, each one more engaging than the last. But as the session went on, I felt the churning in my gut. Soon, it dropped into my lower intestines where it gained power like a category 1 hurricane reaching the Gulf of Mexico.Every stressed muscle, every contorted movement only forced the noxious gale closer to its egress, until I could feel it pounding on the airtight seal that was my clenched sphincter.I began diverting all my mental energy and willpower into keeping this pernicious squall at bay. Inner turmoil and rivaling muscle groups within me put aside their differences to prevent this cataclysm from bursting force. It was all I can do to not break the mother of all winds, to release the confines of my Pandora’s Box.Upon my strenuous feat of strength and willpower, I heard it. The loudest, most obnoxious, cheek flapping, chainsaw fart I have ever experienced. Shocked, I assessed myself, it wasn’t from me. It was from the poor soul next to me, Chewy.I saw his eyes widen, expressing what could only be described as a dejected cocktail of surprise and disbelief, laid on the beet red canvas that was his regretful mug.As the whole class turned to him, knowing what he did, I thought about saving him from this proverbial pit of flatulent despair. “I could rip one too,” I thought. “I could release my expanse. The blaring passing of gas would overshadow his faux pas, we would tum to each other, laugh about it, like two comrades stuck in the trenches of biological warfare knowing we’d die together suffocating on the fumes of defeat, we’d be friends, and I would bear the heavy load of his public embarrassment.”Then I remembered how he treated me daily. Mocking, belittling, pulling rank at the most mundane of times just to have an over-inflated sense of authority; stroking his ego like his engorged, blood-filled member only to ejaculate his corrupt carte blanche over the powerless underlings.The helpful hand I wished to extend to him quickly turned into a balled fist as I decided to fortify my gastric defenses. This dark spite towards my taskmaster filled me with enough conviction to suspend my digestive tempest in place.“Oh, come on!” cried Chewy, scrambling to defending his involuntary action. “It’s perfectly normal. Everyone does it!”I clenched my muscles, locking myself in my decision, and muttering under my breath. “But everybody didn’t do it, you did. And now, you suffer. Namaste.”
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Written by Dylan Boxer.
Dylan Boxer is an award-winning journalist and writer with a strong background in media production and storytelling and a graduate of ACC.
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Creative Non-Fiction

1. The Psithurism of a Silent Voice
2. Refuge
3. In the Margins of a Home
4. A Definition of “Silence”
5. Sermons at Dawn
6. Namaste
7. Shades of Horror
8. Arden in February
9. Change
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Shades of Horror

Fifteen thirteen-year-olds huddled on uncomfortable chairs in an Alexandria, Virginia synagogue. We were informed we would be taking a field trip to the Holocaust Museum next week instead of regular Sunday School.To prepare us for the trip, our teacher had hung up posters depicting the Holocaust. The conference room we were meeting in was twice the size of our regular classroom, drab, with high ceilings and tall windows. It was awash in beiges; no colorful student artwork adorning the walls.Mrs. Haupfman explained that we were to go to each poster and write down on the chart she’d handed out what emotions these images evoked. She explained, “It’s one thing to read about the Holocaust. It’s quite another to witness the vulgar footage.”On her cue, we dutifully rose from our seats and our swarm of red, brown, and blonde heads descended upon the posters on the other half of the room. I noticed they were all black and white images with a small description in the bottom left-hand corner.I looked at the first poster, then down at my chart. What do you see? How do you feel? the columns asked. I wish I had brought a book to write on. I held the chart against the wall—my peers were doing the same—and wrote down the bare minimum: Nazis. Angry.Who cares? There were no grades in Hebrew School.I moved onto the next one. So far this was standard fare; I’d seen similar pictures in textbooks. Jews behind barbed wire, I scribbled against the wall. Sad. The words were bumpy and uneven.We hadn’t all started at the same poster. I heard commentary from some of my peers:
“Eww, gross, I can see his bones sticking out!”“Oh, the stars aren’t pretty like I thought. They’re all jagged,” said someone else.What did Mrs. Haupfman mean by “prepare” us? How overwhelming could the museum be?As the activity continued, the posters got more and more gruesome. The next one depicted naked men covering their genitals, looking down at the ground. Men in overcoats holding guns stood behind them. Ew, I thought, I don’t want to look at this.But I forced myself to be compliant. To just get through this. I looked again at the men covering their genitals and wrote: Prisoners. Scared.Suddenly: a pile of human bones. Femurs, hips. Skulls lined up neatly at the bottom of the pile as if they were waiting for a train. I felt my eyes start to well up.It’s fine, I can take it, I thought.I didn’t know exactly how this made me feel. I wrote down: Bones. Gross.The next poster presented a man looking straight at the camera, so malnourished that his kneecaps seemed to poke out of his legs. There were two men to his right, both with blank stares. All wore ill-fitting shirts and no pants. Sunken eyes, fragile bodies.I didn’t know what to write down.I was shocked. Livid. Saddened and overwhelmed by this incomprehensible image in front of me. I didn’t want anyone else to see me crying.Breaking formation, I trudged up to my teacher. “I can’t look at any more,” I told her, keeping my voice even, getting an eyelash out of my eye to surreptitiously wipe away a tear. “That’s fine,” she said, “But the museum will be worse.”I didn’t want to be left out. In my self- centered, thirteen-year-old mind, it didn’t seem like anyone else was this affected. I was just being a baby.So I took a deep breath and went to the next poster.What looked to be an oven. An entire human rib cage visible inside it. Burned out eye sockets.I could not read the words on the poster. Everything was a blur due to tears catching in the corners of my eyes. If l had read the description, I would have known this was not an oven. It was the crematorium at Buchenwald.I had to stop.I could no longer bear these images. But perhaps I was more struck by how unprepared I was to experience my feelings.I went to the closest bathroom to fight back tears, trickling down hot and wet onto my cheeks. Under the fluorescent lights of the mirror, I steeled myself for my own reflection—a defeated, crying girl looking at me intently.Wishing me to do something.But what?I splashed water onto my face.I forced myself to think about the Holocaust. About how many lives were destroyed, how many families were separated, how many people were killed. I thought quantifying things would make the posters—those mere shades of horror—seem more bearable.It didn’t.As the tears poured out of me, so did my faith. If there was a God, he was cruel, useless, or both. Why would he subject his Chosen People to these horrors?***When I returned to the classroom, the students were in their seats. Mrs. Haupfman asked how we felt. “So sad... How could the Nazis do that?... What a horrible way to die... I’m glad my grandmother survived... I understand how my grandfather didn’t..." students shared in turn. Dry eyes. Steady voices.
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Written by Elaine Ferrell.
Elaine Ferrell lives in Silver Spring, MD where she enjoys baking and spending time outdoors. Elaine has been published in Chapter House Journal, Motherly, ellipsis literature & art, Santa Clara Review, and others.
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Arden in February

Arden and I never really stopped being friends. But as the years passed by and all that was left to connect us was the weak string of an occasional Facebook update, I guess my mind began to control-alt-delete the part of my brain that held my memories with her. She was almost entirely gone from my daily thoughts and I hadn’t even noticed. So when I wandered into a Target that was pushing Valentine’s Day supplies like Cupid himself had a bow stuck pointed at the CEO’s brains and was yelling “WHERE’S THE MONEY BIG GUY,” Arden was the last person I expected to end up thinking about. As I walked down an aisle packed with heart shaped candies and mass-produced stuffed animals, I was hit by the distinct and syrupy scent of her. I was left glued to the floor as my Fitbit announced to me that my heart rate had gotten a little too high.I couldn’t even tell what the smell was at first. It was sweet but bitter, a mix of perfume and laundry detergent softly layered into a person’s sleeves as they rushed past me cradling a heap of Valentines garbage in their arms. My hands trembled as I told my Fitbit to shut the hell up. I glanced towards this stranger who suddenly smelled like the most familiar person on earth. A pang of remembrance ran through me.I guess my brain wasn’t able to delete everything.This lowkey balding, six foot tall white man shopping in an overcrowded Target somehow instantly reminded me of the small girl who would hold my hands and look deep into my eyes like she could see something floating in them. He reminded me of the first girl who held me while I slept and taught me how to really appreciate music. He reminded me of ukuleles and a well-worn trampoline, the sides of the blue fabric fraying at the edges.Arden’s smell reminds me what it was like to be fourteen again.It reminds me of a day when I was sitting in the front seat of an emerald green 2002 Honda Accord. I was snuggly wrapped in an oversized green flannel I had stolen from my dad’s closet. Granny had just asked what my plans were for the evening.My eyes blinked as I glanced up at the rearview mirror. It had just rained and steam was floating up off the road as she drove me home from school. I told her how Arden was coming over later for a sleepover and that I was so nervous because I hadn’t seen her in a while. Granny smiled at me gently as we eased to a stop at an intersection.It was always hard to keep in touch with Arden. She never seemed to have the time for me so I just kept trying. But there she was, finally in my room, holding my guitar and singing softly so as to not wake my sister, dead asleep in the next room.She smelled of her house. Sweet and strong and implacable. I thought of her home and the one shared bathroom with a door that doesn’t quite latch properly. I thought of a little chihuahua that I’m told hates white people, but likes me for some reason. I thought of her mom laughing at this, telling me I’m an honorary family member. I thought of the uncomfortable twin bed we would squeeze into, wrapped around each other, sleepy after sneaking a bit of her dad’s “punch” from the fridge. It tasted of watermelon and rubbing alcohol and the novelty of underage drinking on a warm summer night.She finished the song she was playing, dark eyes drifting up to mine as she asked what we should do next. I smile, taking the guitar and placing it in its case.“We should go outside,” I tell her as I push the guitar case under my bed. In an instant, I swapped the hard handle of the case’s shell for the paper-thin strap of a hastily wrapped gift I had strategically placed there. I followed her down the stairs, sliding the small package into my pocket as we make our way to the back deck with blankets in hand to fight against the cold wind of a February night. Lying in a nest of the sheets and pillows we collected, we looked up, trying to sneak a glimpse at the stars hidden behind a cloud of smog.I held a secret in my pocket. I held a nicely wrapped silver heart shaped necklace I’ve kept for her ever since we first met. I was never brave enough to give it to her until I could find the one perfect moment. Steadying my breathing I sat up and looked down at her.“Arden?” I asked.“Yeah,” She responded lazily, shrugging her shoulders deeper into the blankets.“Arden, could I ever be more than your best friend?” I asked her, heart thumping in my ears. She stared back at me unmoving, her eyes coldly reflecting the golden outline of the patio light. Tears began to well up in her eyes.I never really had a chance.Standing in the fluorescent light of a store that could be in any town in America, I forced myself to look away from this man who smelled like my queer awakening and my first time in the company of heartbreak. Staring at him as he walked out of my view, I thought of how I had changed the subject that night. I had shifted the conversation away from the question until I could see the fear leave her eyes. She’d laughed and grabbed my hands, beaconing me into her arms where she would play with my hair and tell me about her future. I let the necklace sit in my pocket and allowed her to kiss me one last time while messages from her boyfriend lit up the screen on her phone.
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Written by Hetzel River Hetzel.
River Hetzel is a local artist, actor, and writer who recently graduated from ACC with an AFA in
Studio Art.
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