Do Not Open: To Grandpa K
By Marina Kaye
Dear Grandpa K,
I think of you often. Crossing my mind most often during the tough nights of which there are many. You were a soldier once upon a time. You fought in a war, in a land far from home, with your country’s flag emblazoned in red, white, and blue on the right shoulder of your army issued uniform. You carried the M-16.
That is why I write to you now. No one else could understand. Your son decided to keep his feet in corporate, black oxfords rather than stomp around in boots stuffed with newspapers and socks to fit. My mother avoided the armed services with an arm’s length and a gas mask. My little saint of a brother Isaac would be crushed under the weight of the M-60 machine gun if he ever decided to lift it.
We walk through miles of nowhere and nothing, suffocating and relentless. Watery sky blends into soggy horizon. The mud is now etched permanently into the creases of callused palms, under cracked fingernails, within the folds of every god-damned pair of underwear. Our family would not understand. They believe in the silly notion that the stink will wash out once I am home. You and I know the opposite to be true. That is why you turned to the bottle.
Here, I am the medic and it is my duty to fix the unfixable, to carry the supplies that may never be useful, to look either a man or a woman in the eye and lie. “Yes, you will be alright,” I say to every face, every time. I see them clearly, the pain, the fear, the hope, the pain, the pain, a realization, and then nothing. If I did not have the talent to fail with my hands, I would illustrate their faces from flawed memory. There have been few successes, but no amount of success will alleviate the guilt of failure. No longer do I wish to twist the truth into a fiction for my fellow falling comrade to believe in. I do not think I can bear the weight of another false truth.
There is no sage advice nor hope that you could bestow upon me, not a thing you could do because you died on the Tuesday before my birth. Our family believes you died from a losing battle with the bottle, they will believe that I died from enemy fire. My fellow soldiers can see the weight I carry, but they cannot help me anymore than I can help them. We are all at the brink of our own destruction. They will understand, just like you understand. I will cause all who I love to feel pain just like you did. This single letter, solely addressed to you, I hope will reach your headstone, unread. You are the last weight I carry.
See you soon,
Little Soldier Girl
By Marina Kaye
Dear Grandpa K,
I think of you often. Crossing my mind most often during the tough nights of which there are many. You were a soldier once upon a time. You fought in a war, in a land far from home, with your country’s flag emblazoned in red, white, and blue on the right shoulder of your army issued uniform. You carried the M-16.
That is why I write to you now. No one else could understand. Your son decided to keep his feet in corporate, black oxfords rather than stomp around in boots stuffed with newspapers and socks to fit. My mother avoided the armed services with an arm’s length and a gas mask. My little saint of a brother Isaac would be crushed under the weight of the M-60 machine gun if he ever decided to lift it.
We walk through miles of nowhere and nothing, suffocating and relentless. Watery sky blends into soggy horizon. The mud is now etched permanently into the creases of callused palms, under cracked fingernails, within the folds of every god-damned pair of underwear. Our family would not understand. They believe in the silly notion that the stink will wash out once I am home. You and I know the opposite to be true. That is why you turned to the bottle.
Here, I am the medic and it is my duty to fix the unfixable, to carry the supplies that may never be useful, to look either a man or a woman in the eye and lie. “Yes, you will be alright,” I say to every face, every time. I see them clearly, the pain, the fear, the hope, the pain, the pain, a realization, and then nothing. If I did not have the talent to fail with my hands, I would illustrate their faces from flawed memory. There have been few successes, but no amount of success will alleviate the guilt of failure. No longer do I wish to twist the truth into a fiction for my fellow falling comrade to believe in. I do not think I can bear the weight of another false truth.
There is no sage advice nor hope that you could bestow upon me, not a thing you could do because you died on the Tuesday before my birth. Our family believes you died from a losing battle with the bottle, they will believe that I died from enemy fire. My fellow soldiers can see the weight I carry, but they cannot help me anymore than I can help them. We are all at the brink of our own destruction. They will understand, just like you understand. I will cause all who I love to feel pain just like you did. This single letter, solely addressed to you, I hope will reach your headstone, unread. You are the last weight I carry.
See you soon,
Little Soldier Girl
Grandma
By Lily Mitchell
I look back on my days in private elementary school, I must have been about six years old. After dirtying up my uniform at recess and doing lots and lots and lots of multiplication worksheets, little me used to wait eagerly for my grandma to pick me up from school. I would sit on the funky old wooden bench outside of the rickety school building excited that my mom had to work late, because I knew I was going to get to go to Grandma’s house.
I’d hop into her old white Toyota SUV, close the door and we’d be off to her house — Grandma’s house. She would blare classical music, attempting to guess the composer while I told her all about my day from the good to the bad to the playground quarrels. With my small fingers I would press the button to roll down the window, feeling the wind blast through my hair. Grandma always drove kind of fast.
We’d pull into her musty garage and I’d get out to catch a whiff of the comforting smell that her house has — the scent of Grandma’s house. Wow, I wish I could turn that scent into a Yankee Candle. I fondly remember placing my backpack down at her dinner table, sprawling out everything that I lugged around all day. I removed a colorful assortment of pencils, folder after folder, book after book, and my glasses. Yes, I got started with corrective lenses pretty early on. I was quite the blind little six year old. A retired elementary school teacher, she would help me with all of my homework. Yet, the one thing emblazoned in my brain is her perfect penmanship. Grandma prided herself on her cursive.
Here’s the fun part, Grandma broke out the twin-wrapped Devil Square snack cakes. She always kept a couple boxes on top of her refrigerator just for me.
“Grandma, how many can I have?” I asked with in childishly devilish tone.
“Oh, as many as you want,” she replied. You see, my mom never let me have more than two for dessert, but Grandma spoiled me.
Today, Grandma is 85 years old and I am 18. Today, I am scared to even have her drive me anywhere out of fear that she may miss an important detail on the road. Today, I don’t know if she even remembers how she used to indulge me with sweets. Today, Grandma sometimes doesn’t know what day it is or forgets a holiday here and there.
I worry that she forgets to eat, as she shrinks and shrinks and shrinks to the skinniest of proportions and my mom and I always find food in her microwave, cold and forgotten. Out of bewilderment at the mail sent to her, she signs her money away to the kookiest of causes. Thinking an advertisement postcard is a bill, she’ll pay practically anyone. She used to be a fierce quilter and artist, but now she almost never sews. Instead, stitch by stitch, she is slipping away. Grandma is still an avid reader though, delving into one mystery novel after another with a thirst for words.
I don’t want to lose her. A vintage 1940’s black and white photo sits on my dresser. My Grandma is there in her pristine tennis whites with long legs just like mine. She’s laughing with her friend just like she used to laugh with me. Age may have diminished her physically, but her spirit is there and her spark is in my heart.
I carry a little bit of Grandma in everything I do. I’m creative, I know how to rip it in tennis, and every time I look at myself in the mirror I see her in my reflection.
By Lily Mitchell
I look back on my days in private elementary school, I must have been about six years old. After dirtying up my uniform at recess and doing lots and lots and lots of multiplication worksheets, little me used to wait eagerly for my grandma to pick me up from school. I would sit on the funky old wooden bench outside of the rickety school building excited that my mom had to work late, because I knew I was going to get to go to Grandma’s house.
I’d hop into her old white Toyota SUV, close the door and we’d be off to her house — Grandma’s house. She would blare classical music, attempting to guess the composer while I told her all about my day from the good to the bad to the playground quarrels. With my small fingers I would press the button to roll down the window, feeling the wind blast through my hair. Grandma always drove kind of fast.
We’d pull into her musty garage and I’d get out to catch a whiff of the comforting smell that her house has — the scent of Grandma’s house. Wow, I wish I could turn that scent into a Yankee Candle. I fondly remember placing my backpack down at her dinner table, sprawling out everything that I lugged around all day. I removed a colorful assortment of pencils, folder after folder, book after book, and my glasses. Yes, I got started with corrective lenses pretty early on. I was quite the blind little six year old. A retired elementary school teacher, she would help me with all of my homework. Yet, the one thing emblazoned in my brain is her perfect penmanship. Grandma prided herself on her cursive.
Here’s the fun part, Grandma broke out the twin-wrapped Devil Square snack cakes. She always kept a couple boxes on top of her refrigerator just for me.
“Grandma, how many can I have?” I asked with in childishly devilish tone.
“Oh, as many as you want,” she replied. You see, my mom never let me have more than two for dessert, but Grandma spoiled me.
Today, Grandma is 85 years old and I am 18. Today, I am scared to even have her drive me anywhere out of fear that she may miss an important detail on the road. Today, I don’t know if she even remembers how she used to indulge me with sweets. Today, Grandma sometimes doesn’t know what day it is or forgets a holiday here and there.
I worry that she forgets to eat, as she shrinks and shrinks and shrinks to the skinniest of proportions and my mom and I always find food in her microwave, cold and forgotten. Out of bewilderment at the mail sent to her, she signs her money away to the kookiest of causes. Thinking an advertisement postcard is a bill, she’ll pay practically anyone. She used to be a fierce quilter and artist, but now she almost never sews. Instead, stitch by stitch, she is slipping away. Grandma is still an avid reader though, delving into one mystery novel after another with a thirst for words.
I don’t want to lose her. A vintage 1940’s black and white photo sits on my dresser. My Grandma is there in her pristine tennis whites with long legs just like mine. She’s laughing with her friend just like she used to laugh with me. Age may have diminished her physically, but her spirit is there and her spark is in my heart.
I carry a little bit of Grandma in everything I do. I’m creative, I know how to rip it in tennis, and every time I look at myself in the mirror I see her in my reflection.
Athena's Balancing Act
By Lily Mitchell
Justina, a young woman, sat outside of her peaceful and humble home in Athens. She looked up at the night sky. Wild hyacinths were blooming, it was finally the end of a cold and unforgiving winter. Nature seemed to be restoring itself, but she felt like there was something missing. Day to night, love to hate, black to white; there was no grey, no middle ground. To her, it seemed as though Helios painted the sky bright blue and when he faded out, Selene came and simply delved the skies into blackness.
Meanwhile, Athena sat up on Mount Olympus with her scale next her. This was no ordinary scale. It cradled the balance between all extremes on Earth. From life and death to peace and war; human beings’ lives depended on this sacred item. Athena viewed balance in the world as one of her biggest responsibilities.
One day, Justina awoke to the boisterous sounds of children arguing and peered out of her window to see two girls fighting over a doll. She went outside to try to get them to compromise by taking turns playing with it, but they would not listen. She let them be, but she knew inside that this was the future generation of Athens; a boatload of adults who can not agree or collaborate. It made her fear that only anger and war would prosper in her world. Justina was overwhelmed with this prospect of the future.
On this same day, Athena noticed that her scale was starting to lean too far over. This had always signaled a warning in the past. She knew there was an imbalance. The only problem was that she could not see the issue through the curtain of events around her. As days went by, she observed that nights brewed blacker and days grew gloomier. The view from Mt. Olympus seemed to become less and less peaceful and more chaotic. Little dots on the land far below 2 looked anguished and fraught with disagreement. Athena knew what she needed to do to take action.
The next day, she met with the sun, Helios, and the moon, Selene. She explained to them how the people of the world were beginning to become mentally incapable of working together and being flexible. The gates to their minds were closed and she feared that this would tip the balance toward war. Athena, Helios, and Selene pondered for hours on end when finally, they had a solution. Athena decided to use the skies as a metaphor for balance. The plan was for Helios to work with Selene to plan his arrival and departure from the skies everyday. He would call these moments the “sunrise” and “sunset.” The sunrise would calmly ease the people into their day while the sunset would gradually bring them into a serene sleep. The skies would be a daily reminder of how we must work together to get along. The cool blues would balance the hot reds to prove that two very different concepts can coexist and create beautiful harmony. Grey would exist between the ever-so-quick dark and light, night and day, transitions in the world. The people would, for once understand the importance of compromise.
Justina awakened with a satisfied feeling in her soul. She simply listened to the outdoors. There was silence and she could finally hear the birds. She looked out of her window and saw shades of pink, purple, blue and orange flooding the sky. The children seemed more at ease, and were listening to each other instead of arguing. Throughout the day, as she walked through the streets, people cheerfully talked, collaborated and listened to one another. When she was about to go to bed, the blue sky repainted itself in shades of orange and dark purple and then faded to black.
Athena’s scale was equal. Balance was restored to the world as the sun rose and set for eternity to remind the mortals of the importance of compromise.
By Lily Mitchell
Justina, a young woman, sat outside of her peaceful and humble home in Athens. She looked up at the night sky. Wild hyacinths were blooming, it was finally the end of a cold and unforgiving winter. Nature seemed to be restoring itself, but she felt like there was something missing. Day to night, love to hate, black to white; there was no grey, no middle ground. To her, it seemed as though Helios painted the sky bright blue and when he faded out, Selene came and simply delved the skies into blackness.
Meanwhile, Athena sat up on Mount Olympus with her scale next her. This was no ordinary scale. It cradled the balance between all extremes on Earth. From life and death to peace and war; human beings’ lives depended on this sacred item. Athena viewed balance in the world as one of her biggest responsibilities.
One day, Justina awoke to the boisterous sounds of children arguing and peered out of her window to see two girls fighting over a doll. She went outside to try to get them to compromise by taking turns playing with it, but they would not listen. She let them be, but she knew inside that this was the future generation of Athens; a boatload of adults who can not agree or collaborate. It made her fear that only anger and war would prosper in her world. Justina was overwhelmed with this prospect of the future.
On this same day, Athena noticed that her scale was starting to lean too far over. This had always signaled a warning in the past. She knew there was an imbalance. The only problem was that she could not see the issue through the curtain of events around her. As days went by, she observed that nights brewed blacker and days grew gloomier. The view from Mt. Olympus seemed to become less and less peaceful and more chaotic. Little dots on the land far below 2 looked anguished and fraught with disagreement. Athena knew what she needed to do to take action.
The next day, she met with the sun, Helios, and the moon, Selene. She explained to them how the people of the world were beginning to become mentally incapable of working together and being flexible. The gates to their minds were closed and she feared that this would tip the balance toward war. Athena, Helios, and Selene pondered for hours on end when finally, they had a solution. Athena decided to use the skies as a metaphor for balance. The plan was for Helios to work with Selene to plan his arrival and departure from the skies everyday. He would call these moments the “sunrise” and “sunset.” The sunrise would calmly ease the people into their day while the sunset would gradually bring them into a serene sleep. The skies would be a daily reminder of how we must work together to get along. The cool blues would balance the hot reds to prove that two very different concepts can coexist and create beautiful harmony. Grey would exist between the ever-so-quick dark and light, night and day, transitions in the world. The people would, for once understand the importance of compromise.
Justina awakened with a satisfied feeling in her soul. She simply listened to the outdoors. There was silence and she could finally hear the birds. She looked out of her window and saw shades of pink, purple, blue and orange flooding the sky. The children seemed more at ease, and were listening to each other instead of arguing. Throughout the day, as she walked through the streets, people cheerfully talked, collaborated and listened to one another. When she was about to go to bed, the blue sky repainted itself in shades of orange and dark purple and then faded to black.
Athena’s scale was equal. Balance was restored to the world as the sun rose and set for eternity to remind the mortals of the importance of compromise.