Seasons
SUMMER
Beneath sunlit skies and endless afternoons, every moment becomes a story worth keeping.
Explore a collection of works inspired by the warmth, freedom, and nostalgia of summer.
10:11 am
By Yumi
the swirling curls
on her hazelnut canvas gleefully
basks in the golden
glow of May,
illuminating what’s to come
her wet nose glistening and
twitching and her ears – a surveying
tool to catch glimpses of the
mirth and woes of other
residents; and O her eyes, those
iridescent jewel of a kind, that
crinkles and folds like an iris
in your hands, secretly
murmuring to me
i love you
i love you
i love you
in her own magnificent way
Summer journey
By Kitsuko Dragonstar
I bet you're stuck at home,
Probably bored out of your mind,
Or just dying of boredom cooped up,
We’ll just know it’s never too late,
To kick open the door,
To explore the unknown,
Wondering into this big world,
The world we fear but wonder about,
So set off before you go back to your “casual everyday”.
Motherhood in Summer
By Bronte Fisher
By summer,
the baby was here and you were still home.
Tired, yes.
Changed, yes.
But still coming back to me with your whole self.
I had never seen someone go out into the world
and make home the place they saved their best parts for.
Not leftovers.
Not silence.
Not the version of you that had already been spent.
You made missing you easier because I knew
you were missing me too.
Because not a second passed where I had to wonder
if you wanted to be somewhere else.
And I have known people to leave as themselves and come home different.
Or not come home at all.
I have known love to walk through a door and forget me on the other side.
But you didn’t.
Not then.
So by the end of summer, when you were still that soft, I told my nervous system see?
He understands us now.
He has seen us at our most vulnerable
and loved us like it was easy.
After thirty-two years of bracing, I breathed
I finally told myself it’s safe.
Artist Spotlight
Tamizh Ponni VP
Sharingan
Digital (Autodesk Sketchbook)
Intoxicated by the power of disappearance, Medusa finally found peace as a recluse.
Wrong
A SAD SUMMER EDITION
By Sophie Gee
I don’t know how long I’ve been here; I usually keep track of how many times I hear the piano in that song that loops in the shower. I’ve been trying to wash the goosebumps off. The melody keeps me company, but not in the suffocating way. At least not yet. Around and around it goes, lyrics as cryptic as the way you talk to me now. Late, too late. I knew it was too late. She did too. Sometimes the songs I listen to sound just as circular as the words you slur to me over the phone when it’s this late. You talk about how you’d kill any man who had ever hurt me, but I wouldn’t put you at risk. No, I don’t think you’re suicidal yet. And I am grateful. You could kill any man who dared to look at me wrong, but you still can’t look in the mirror honestly. You could be violent, trust me, I’ve seen it. But you couldn’t be gentle if I asked. I don’t ask anymore.
I don’t want to hear about how horribly you slept. Even if I slept better, I feel worse. I want that right anyway, to say I have it worse. As if it somehow saves me from the fate I fear of turning into you. Perhaps the process has already begun. Maybe it starts with pity. Maybe it starts with guilt. One thing I know to be true is I still hear it through the music. The voice that has no owner, telling me that I have done something wrong. No one could ever know how hard I try; I know from evidence that I try too hard, but I will always feel I have done wrong in some way. Cutting my losses, saving my face, making sure my effort is not in vain if I only do more harm, or worse: just the same amount. More would mean change. Less would mean change. The same is the same. And nothing ever moves in this goddamn house. I recognize the contradiction as there is not a lick of stability to spare between the 5 of us. Mother, father, sister, brother, and the big terrible thing that lives between us all. It fed you and mother sugar and the dream of being unique to your past if you created a vessel for all your wrong. Heavy is my head, aching is my back, but I have never learned to fall, and I fear even in that, such a natural thing it would be, I would do it wrong.
Poem by Jacob Hart
A SAD SUMMER EDITION
And the clouds coloured the water
Grey like concrete—
And the wind groaned
In dissonant chords—
With some imagination
This could be paradise
A short story
by Ionut Daniel Vlad
"They are calling out to You." Menethel pointed at my globe.
"I know."
"You deny their right."
"I know."
"It's wrong." He tightened His lips and hissed between them angrily. Hunching over me, His right hand on the backrest and His left on the world pedestal, He whispered, "It is their right. Answer them."
"I will not."
"Their persistence will falter under their egoism." Men turned my chair around and crouched below my eye level.
"It remains to be seen."
"Who do You think You are?" His eyes were burning now.
"I am the One of this globe."
"Precisely." He wiped the fire from His expression. "It was not their choice to exist, but they do exist. Their cessation is hollow if choice is rendered futile. You must answer."
"I will not."
Menethel stood up, turned around, and stepped out of my cubicle and into His. He grabbed the chair in front of His world pedestal, holding His globe, and returned to my cubicle.
"Are You prepared to risk the Good?" He sat down next to me.
"I will let causality run its course."
"Why?" He began reading my globe.
"Causality never runs its course."
"There is a reason for that." He squinted at my globe. "We guide them for the Good."
"I want to know if they can transcend on their own."
"Have You gone completely Urgical?" He lowered His voice again after realising He had raised it. He gazed at me, attempting to read into me. "You risk weakening the Good. Have You forgotten Allphaether?"
"The globes are created with the perfect conditions for intelligence. Within intelligence lies free will. They needn't Guidance if they truly possess free will."
"Free will is contrasted with Guidance." He went back to analysing my globe. "The binary is the perfect potentiator of choice. They either accept or deny the Guidance."
"Perfection is static."
"Evidently." He pulled Himself closer to my pedestal. "The Good remains ubiquitous because of that." He turned His eyes toward me, grinning. "You did interfere. They divided their Book into before and after Your intervention."
"No. The Book is fabulatory."
"You didn't even hand them the commands?" He began rubbing His face with both hands.
"No."
"At least You sent them the Son." He scratched His beardless chin.
"I injected the anomaly. He is fatherless. I inculcated in Him His mission."
"They killed Him!" His voice thundered through the Permanence. Others began to chatter sibilantly, and Men shrugged His shoulders in regret. "This is what causality gets You if left to its own devices," He whispered to me.
"Yes. They did. But the mission survived."
Menethel exhaled in relief. "It's not all lost." He pushed His chair closer to me. "Causality made them cretins. They think You can see the future."
"If they can evolve beyond that, self-transcendence is possible."
"You surely aren't serious about going through with this. I mean, I can see in Your globe that You set up just one intelligent lifeform, but there are still trillions of choices that count towards the Good." He began rubbing His hands together.
"I want to see where causality leads."
"If You're wrong about this..." Men bowed His head, His eyes fixed on the floor.
"But if I am right, We know."
"They are killing each other over You." Men scratched the top of His head. "These are hollow choices."
"They are learning."
"You have the power to stop the suffering." He raised His left hand toward the globe while searching my face for concession.
"Choice is not contrasted only by Guidance."
"But why let them suffer?" He settled more comfortably into the chair.
"They are maturing considerably faster. Look here. Causality engendered evolution to select for harming and avoiding harm. Violence is the canvas. They seem to have accessed a deep well of wisdom, reared from suffering."
"You are indeed right." He covered His mouth. "The suffering does indeed accelerate understanding." He pointed at an occurrence on the globe. "Look, they are beginning to unify. They have formed an alliance of nations to prevent greed from usurping others."
"The unknown is not a destroyer. It is potential."
"Well, that's probably the end of the road for this globe." He said with a disappointed expression and slapped His knees. "They are creating new life. If they don't resolve their ethical framework soon, they will awaken their doom. Synthetic life is forbidden for practical reasons."
"Not if they don't strive for replication of themselves."
"It is impossible to instil morality into an immortal entity." He searched my face for a reaction.
"You are wrong, dear Menethel. They understood the responsibility of creation because—see for yourself—they stopped at mimicking intelligence."
"By Allphaether's doom," He said, placing His hands on His head. "They made information communicate back, but stopped just before synthetic consciousness. Causality has indeed produced the Good."
"Transcendence is not threatened. It never was. Intelligence is the Good."
"Of course, they used chimerical intelligence to colonise the stars. It was the next causal step." Menethel stood up. "You were right, Yahweh, but it was too close."
"But now We know. Where there is intelligence, there is Good, and transcendence is but a matter of subjective time."
"It's just that the journey there is quite brutal," Menethel said.
"Existence is."