Summer 2025 Issue

A CURATED WRITTEN WORD COLLECTIVE

[alter egos] ; #kpop #concept #photograp

CVS Tampons, Escape Velocity, The Speed of Light

Clara Allison

CVS Tampons
He’s looking at me like I might be holding
an animal, his eyes falling shamelessly
in my basket, scrutinizing. I get what’s cheap.
The inelegant cost of bleeding was about $12.57
a month including tax, not including the time
spent soap-scrubbing life’s essence from bedsheets
or keeled over, writhing, sharing pity with Eve.
There’s a theory that through evolution we can feel
someone staring in our peripheral vision,
a sixth sense. When my gaze meets his,
he shifts his weight, coughs brusquely,
and shuffles ahead in line.
Look all you want, I think, have your spectacle.
See how our humanness comes with a price––
see how I am also an animal.

Escape Velocity
Walking towards you I recall
the number of oblivions at hand––

enough drink and a fatal step,
a single nip from a gorgeous arachnid
or the urge to wander dreaming onto the freeway.

I preferred the abyss of your mouth
which blossomed like a night

born again–– warm, lush,
sedative as a threshold.

I have no need of ends
when you find me,

swallowed as I am by a veil
like the pull of a planet cresting close

to a moon. This bed is a drain
in a dark, locked room.

The Speed of Light
Tired of trying to be beautiful, tired of memory’s paralysis,
tired of the frigid vacuum of February,

I draw the curtains. I must thank this night
for descending upon me, as it has delivered the news

that I have survived myself again. The heliotropes
in the neighbor’s window box have come early,

premature by some sagacious trickery.
At sunfall there is an art to their guesswork,

probing, asserting their thereness. They have no one
to perform for, drinking the light in the same manner

of our skin. Valiant of them to insist on their
brightness in the bitter wind, to hold what warmth

they can, as if they cannot be scarred by the thing
that sustains them. It is with this gentle steeliness that I awake

and come to the window to love again
the very sun that burned me.

She's Hungry Again

Kaviya Jain

I can physically feel my skin tearing, ripping apart, as if my flesh were made of peach skin and an over enthusiastic child was digging her nails and hangnails into the funny orange stuff and wrenching it apart. I can hear the heady sound as cell stretches and rips away from cell. I can see fingers poking through the gaping masses in my skin as she pushes and pulls her body through, writhing and wailing and wet. Her lips are open so wide I can see through to her gummy pink throat. The color of her uvula matches her acrylic chipped nails. She shrugs and drops my carcass to the floor like my flesh was a shawl. She is naked and I am naked.

Do you believe me?

Grace Wang

I don't practice smiling to myself in the mirror.

I am not crazy.

I watch people move through the world like oil parts water, easy, like breathing in for 5 and out for 6.

I do follow that man, who crossed the street without looking both ways so casually it seemed like his occupation was crossing streets.

I do follow him, okay, but I am not crazy.

After I finish my coffee I stay in my seat at the Pret because that woman just took her jacket off and slug it on the back of her chair without thinking about it for a single second.

It happened so fast.

I could cry.

I am not crazy.

I don't try to walking in sync with strangers.

Sometimes I try to match their strides.
The woman in the blue had a really good pace.
Her feet knew where.
Mine make noise.
I am not crazy.

I linger in doorways pretending to check my phone.

That guy just pushed it open with his shoulder without breaking pace.

It was like the world rearranges itself when he needs it to.
I try it.
I am not crazy.

They laugh on the train like it is normal.
I take a picture of their smiles.
Delete it before anyone sees.
At night I lie flat on my back with arms by my side,
I wonder how people always know where to put their hands.
I am not crazy.

Mute

Paige Neily

The TV murmurs in the corner, low but insistent, a child tugging at a sleeve. I turn the volume down. The images are enough. A field, heat-shimmered and unreal, bisected by chain fencing and the glint of something metallic. Badges, maybe. People run, dust kicking up. A woman’s sandal is left behind, one strap bent under like it had somewhere else to be. Outside, the lawnmowers drone in sync, a ritual hum across the cul-de-sac. The Jacobs' landscapers are early again. The smell of cut grass and gasoline seeps through the walls. I sip Nescafe that’s gone lukewarm. On screen, a voice says processing centers, says numbers, says deterrence. A child is crying, but politely, like he knows not to cause a scene. I shift on the couch. The cushions remember, hold the shape of my indecision. Across the room, the lamp is still on from last nigh. Its shade tilted, like it had been listening too. The footage jumps: chain-link fences, thermal footage, men with rifles. A drone’s eye view. The reporter’s voice doesn’t waver, just folds the story into a neat stack of phrases, like doing laundry.

My neighborhood is quiet at this hour. The gated entrance ticks open and closed for dog walkers in fleece vests and women with lattes.The boy on the screen again. His hand gripping a woman’s sleeve, his eyes wide and waiting, he’s asking a question no one is answering. I mute the TV. Outside, the sky is pale and grey and empty. Somewhere, a leaf blower starts. I open the window a crack and let in the noise.

when i am sick i think too fast

Fayeh A.

my brain won’t walk, it runs
barefoot, in gravel, dragging memory like a leash.
i close my eyes but everything behind them keeps moving.

the pillow is soaked.
i thought about third grade.
i thought about that time i said something cruel in the cafeteria.
i thought about the freckles on your left shoulder.
i thought about death for four hours
and taxes for five.

my body hums like an old machine
left on overnight,

overheated
the kind that ticks even after it’s unplugged.
i check the clock.
3:07.
i check again.
3:07.

i can feel my heartbeat behind my knees.
it’s whispering you forgot something.
i sit up and the room swims,
a fishbowl filled with breath and yellow light.

someone is coughing down the hall.

every thought is a firecracker.
every thought is a mosquito,
and my mind is a summer porch.

i remember things i never lived.
a woman in a red coat dropping a glass in a diner.
a dog barking at a green balloon.
my father’s hand on the gearshift.

i try to pray but end up apologizing instead.

the ceiling cracks like an egg.
i laugh.
it sounds like choking.

i close my eyes again.
inside, a lamb is running laps.
it looks like me.
it doesn’t stop.

Ego death for the first time ever

Cris SL.

One morning I woke up without the word “I.”
It must’ve slid off in the night,
along with the dream where I peeled an orange
and found a small, blinking face inside.

I tried to put myself on like a coat but the sleeves just fell off.
The meat stayed.
The consciousness somewhere in the walls,
tapping.

I walked around for days like a grocery bag with a hole
thoughts dripping out in a wet trail behind me.
Someone said my name,
high, brittle, like glass being stirred.

wanted to say,
but there was nothing behind my teeth except the sound wind makes
when it forgets where it’s going.

Gender turned to soup first
alphabet soup, sticky and lukewarm.
I tried to spell something honest with the floating letters.
I got “ ”

The ego, I think, is a trick of lighting.
You keep enough fluorescent bulbs on
and suddenly you believe in edges.
and the silhouette runs.

I am slouching toward the drain.
Hair clog. Mouth noise. Old receipts.
I am what’s left when language forgets the recipe for self.

Mother Teresa Didn’t Spiral After Brunch

Aby Solomany

If goodness is measured it rots.
I draft compassion like copy
The virtuous don’t check the chat
to see if their check-in landed right.
They don’t replay the moment
they said “take your time”
and wonder if it sounded performative.
I do.
Every mercy I offer arrives pre-creased,
like it’s been folded and unfolded too many times.
It still works, maybe.
But it’s no longer gift-wrapped.

101 Damnations

Meghana Gosh

I want to be spotted like blot in cream, like someone left me out too long and now I curdle visibly. Speckled like a bad banana peel, soft in places that shouldn’t be soft, blushing where no blood is supposed to pool. I want the skin to say it before I do. Polka-dot me with fever, with shame, with tiny moons of mold that bloom in time-lapse, a dermatological confession. Let the spots crawl, not land but movement, a slow parade of something not-right. No more clean skin like hotel soap! They chant. I want to look like static feels. Like a dial turned halfway between stations. I want to be a textile that makes people itch. A tag you cut off and now feels ever worse. I want a stranger’s hand to hover mid-air and not land. Because something’s wrong with the picture. Something’s pulsing beneath. The spots would say yes, this one is thinking too hard again, this one doesn’t sleep right, this one licks the backs of her teeth when she lies. I want to be marked the way milk sweats in heat. The way ink bleeds through cheap paper. I want them to see the outside and know: there’s something in there knocking too loud.

Vision Board

Eliza Losoves

I have a Pinterest board called "Love."
I've never been in a relationship.
Is that hopeful or sad?
I also have a board called "Dream Life."
Now that I know is sad.

The apartment in the photos has tall windows,
light pooling on a rug no one has ever spilled wine on.
There’s a bookshelf with only the spines I wish I’d read,
and a table set for two,
though no one's ever sat down.

Sometimes I scroll through it late at night,
like I'm looking for proof
that someone like me could live
a life that doesn’t feel borrowed.

None of it smells like anything.

No socks left on the floor,
no half-laughed sentences caught in doorways.
Just pictures. Just light.
A mirror to look into and think nice thoughts.

That I know is sad, too.