by Kate Ward '23 on February 16, 2023
Portfolio Co-Editor

---

Portfolio

---

Night begins to move, writhing and seething as the bristled backs catch the light of the dropping sun. Among the red rock lives a creature who carries night on his back and stars in his eyes. 

The cicada calls to him from his place along the ravine scarred by waters now long dry. 

Those who nestle in the red rock carry the history of the lost. 

The Cocopah tribe, the cowboys, each driven out. 

The creature among the rock, the javelina, their tribe becoming lost. 

Soon the blood orange of the rock, the yucca, and the crimson of the berries in the underbrush won’t be enough.

Soon the javelina will have to engage with the streets

Will have to understand humans in his desert home. 

The javelina speaks through a bristled muzzle, “I have understood the desert without them, it is sweeter than the blooms of the prickly pear. It is sweet like the rain. It is bright and calming like the red rock.”

The cicada sings his jagged song of mourning.

by Max Gilman '25 on February 16, 2023
Portfolio Co-Editor

---

Portfolio

---

In what ways could the sun eat the sky? 

In an auburn-radiant shade, cloaked in sifting haze? 

Harboring mahogany howls, slowly fading crimson-cloudlines? 

Beating blood orange beams of sun death consume your vision;  

to butcher your former attention; mindless death—ignoring individualism.  

Sun,  

   Eat me like you eat skylines 

Before my mind is mossed 

 in patterned anxieties of my owner’s deadlines. 

Sun, 

  Brilliant poet of silence and scattered bird flight, 

Eat me in a roaring red blaze. 

Dreading the end is comedy 

because my work collar chokes me blind  

to the burning sunrise we desire 

in mornings we wake to quaking hellfire, 

When spires fall and money rots, 

Where birds die,  

                        But not from gunshots. 

by Meg Brodeur '24 on February 16, 2023
Portfolio Co-Editor

---

Featured Slider

---

After lavender and magenta dissolve into twilight,

twilight melts into darkness

and my ghost comes to visit me

fleeing her dwelling place

she drips out of the glass picture frame,

with pale skin and shaky hands

she seeps underneath my chilled skin

curling her toes into the muscle and tissue:

a silent plea—

         please let me stay.

she’s the essence of a past self

the version of me that I yearn to forget,

numb to vibrant colors and throaty laughter

numb to tenderness and warm embraces

and an estranged friend of hope and trust

with her nature back inside me

I feel the urge to leave my comfortable bed,

to sit on the clammy tiles of my childhood bathroom

I’ve found it’s the best place to be

with bloodshot eyes and tear-soaked cheeks, that is

but instead, I sink further into my mattress

and remind her once again about the dangers of codependency

how long till she learns to listen-

how long till I learn to listen?

“you’re ok now, darling” I tell her,

using a voice, I know she’s never heard before,

it is gentle and forgiving

entirely devoid of judgment

I gently push her away from my fast-beating heart—

afraid she’ll root herself within my veins

leaving me unable to decipher her body from mine.

by Sarah Klema '23 on February 10, 2023
Portfolio Staff

---

Featured Slider

---

I want to run into a forest green I want to run into a forest green and full of life I want to run into a forest green and let this emptiness pour out I want to run into a forest green. 

When I think of winter, it is always with a fondness for the cold. Painted on the fringe of my vision, like lofty angel’s wings, marble peaks of snow hover beneath a bleached blue sky. The mountains. Winter. Bare-boned trees and still gray streets. Cold. 

I have never understood what makes the cold so scary—why people seem to hate it so much. What is so sinister about the fall of snowflakes, cool and soft, piling up outside like sheets of stardust from the sky? 

Or, what is so bad about the soft buzz of numbing coolness that washes over a girl when she steps outside, into that crisp clean air, letting out her breath in cotton candy puffs of cloud in the stillness of a starry night? 

I love the cold. 

So, when you left me bleeding out the empty space you furnished in my chest—after you crept your way inside and picked apart my heart—I was grateful I could still feel cold. Cold encircling my body like a heady cloud of pain, biting and sweet. Cold that numbs the body but clears the mind. Wind that caresses my scarf-bare cheeks with phantom fingertips and plasters pinprick kisses on my lips—numbs me till I feel warm again. 

In the loss of a love, there is a peculiar sort of ache that does not resolve with time and space. An emptiness born out of a vanquished desire, a vanished hope, shattered dreams. It is a sensation with a constancy which mirrors that of the pain found in cold. Cold like a coil of icy ribbons wound around on every limb; cold that fills the hollow stillness of a love-broke heart, fills it with a piercing pain to shock it back to life again. Even as it pulls at the warmth of blood and sucks the veins dry. 

So, when I look back at the love you used to give, and the joy that stuffed me so full of warmth that I forgot how to enjoy the solitary bliss of cold, I am suddenly grateful that you chose to say goodbye. You, whose warmth could not withstand the shock of cold, who chose to say goodbye.  

One day, I hope you can learn to love the cold. When your store of warmth runs out, I hope you do not try to run from the cold that will inevitably usher in. That it becomes for you a constant and a steadfast friend. That you do not mistake it for a hateful thing and overlook its beauty. 

There is a lovely love in cold, in the pain of a final goodbye. There is a sad-sweet stillness and a new-wrought place with space enough to breathe. So, maybe it is okay to be alone on the fourteenth day of the new year’s second month. To accept the funny comfort born from a cutting kind of pain. To relish in the hollowness—replenish it with an older and a firmer kind of love. 

Yes, maybe it is okay. 

by Sara Junkins '23 on February 10, 2023
Portfolio Staff

---

Featured Slider

---

All the crafted cards

Fly by in a shuffle

of swirling symmetry,

Hypnotizing as they masquerade

In the guise of sameness.

But on one of the unseen sides

Looms the sinister shadow

of the Queen of Spades,

The mysterious mistress

Dictating Fortune herself,

Changing the fate of the game

At the appointed time.

Undesirable yet lusted

After, she lures in sailors as a siren

In a sea of mirages

Of promises of riches and forever favor,

And silently stalks her prey as a mountain lion.

She captures all the kings, stakes them with daggers.

She imprisons the queens and locks them away,

Former friends becoming forever enemies.

She steals all the hearts and pins them to her wall

As trophies, like butterflies unable to fly away,

And bursts them with darts as though they were popped balloons

Containing all hopes and dreams

Of winning the game.

She cloaks herself with night

As she rides her bicycle

As though it were a mighty steed

Triumphantly tromping through darkness.

She shoots the moon with bow and arrow

Until its light fades.

Mistress of Silence,

Mistress of Death,

The silent cupid who strikes unaware…

Beware the Queen of Spades,

The Queen of Broken Hearts.

by Max Gilman '25 on February 10, 2023
Portfolio Co-Editor

---

Portfolio

---

Like food in storage,

I bear a singular label.

Never mine

And I fear to be thrown away.

Rotting in mold,

isn’t better. To be

  forgotten or folded

  in a thousand aliases—

And then who am I, to define myself, if I never was to begin with?

   Y.o.u:

the letters punched into my keyboard right now in this present moment; all I will ever be able to utilize, defining 

                        who I am.

 M.e: 

       dismal attempt to define life;

       a testimony to the person who wrote these words, 

       my last connection with

       who I was seconds ago.

                                    a label: nonexistent.

  A fib, a lie, myth, mold

       stains the seams of your named tag.

But you are the second, the moment, the present,

      you are an ink blot knotted on paper,

             are not the name of the parent.

better to be forgotten

Than folded 

In a thousand aliases,

        Like food in storage, 

        Like certificates of identity,

WmnetbyovbOsnjwsnzRuxuoDbwaSmtbuc   

without purpose.

on a page.

congealing.

by Taylor Rogers '24 on December 8, 2022
Portfolio Co-Editor

---

Christmas

---

I pull my knit sweater over my head, 

The soft green fabric kissing my skin,

Simultaneously tugging at my curls,

Peering over my shoulders curiously as I debate: jeans or leggings?

My sweater embraces me, 

Gently reminding me of rainy days,

Days Dad and I would sit indoors, 

Eyes eagerly scanning a puzzle as we tried to pick up the pieces,

Putting together our incomplete picture, 

One we can’t resolve no matter how hard we try.

The vivid green is equivalent to my mother’s eyes,

Eyes that always held love for me despite a tongue that failed to do the same,

Invoking matches that were burnt against cigarettes,

Igniting flames that often caused more damage when they were put out.

Tainted tear drops still stain the sweater’s inseam, 

Ensuring the memory of her is never eased,

As my first heartbreak forced me to turn to my item of comfort,

Questions and confusion being whispered into the sleeve’s arm,

As I wondered why I wasn’t good enough for love.

Perfume that fails to go away after fifty washes still makes me shiver,

As simple times with shining sunrises run through my brain, 

The beach’s natural scent a consistency,

No matter the distance I travel from her sands,

Her lands of golden seashells and mysterious pearls. 

My alarm snaps me back to reality,

So I slide on my jeans and Vans,

Which fail to offer the love of my sweater.

Yet I still wear them,

Allowing them to embrace my skin,

As I go out and make a new memory in this attire.

by Fiona Clarke '23 on September 8, 2022
Portfolio Staff

---

Poetry

---

At home you and I make the coffee without caffeine,

For the heart murmurers who gather in another room,

While jostling predispositions in hallways wait their turns to be heard.

We save the coffee grounds and the broken eggshells

For the soil of the vines and bleeding-hearts and thyme

That make clear our hearts and lungs and fill our eyes

With loss-impossible oxygen.

And so, surreal and serious, I smoke no more, and speak much less,

And yet these days, I take comfort

When I hear the rain fall like knuckles cracking,

And I look up to a sky that has grit its teeth,

Prepared to rain its blows upon me,

But cracks a love-worn smile.

And all dear and delirious, we dare to lay it bare:

“O brother, where art thou bleeding from?”

“A horizontal smile and a vertical touch—”

“Son, my children are gathering precious stones and metals,

And getting blood and dirt on their hands—”

“Daughter, I am fool’s proof and wise man’s wonderings—”

Say that the house is half empty—your son has died.

Say that the house is half full—

Christ is going up to heaven.

by Mariela Flores '23 on September 8, 2022
Portfolio Staff

---

Poetry

---

You were so special. Like a beam of something good sitting next to me in every classroom, every space, every inch of the world as if we owned the air that we breathed in. 

You were so good to me. With words that wrapped me up warmly, just like a hug. With belly laughter that only you knew the sound of. With talking about futures neither of us knew how we would get a hold of––I sit here somewhere that feels too much like the past, waiting to know if you are close to your future. I hope you are well. 

I hate mourning you while you are still alive, living a life I thought I’d be a part of. I hate watching you grow from afar––I try to reach into the pixels and write something good, something clever, algo bonito. It doesn’t matter anymore. I know that. 

I’m not angry, I’m not even sad, you’ve let time fill that wound with new laughs, new people, new warmth, new futures, new stories. Still, I miss you. 

I wish you would have let me know it was the end of us. The end of catch ups in between brand new classes, brand new people, brand new lives. 

But you will fade into my memory, like a dream you wake up from after a deep sleep. You will fade like the friends before you and the ones who’ve come after. 

I think of you now and then, you’re like an echo in the air, you’re only with me briefly. 

I just hope you are well. I miss you, and I just hope you are well. 

by Caitlin Bartley '24 on September 8, 2022
Portfolio Staff

---

Poetry

---

I worship you on a golden altar of daylight,
knees sinking into sand where I sit in supplication,
flaunting you unabashedly with my flushed cheeks
and freckled chest, wearing you like a cross.
You spoil me seductively,
appeasing my appetites with your alms
of apricots and aperol,
arousing my desire with the amorous caress
of your balmy evening air,
awakening my spirit in your seas
of salt and sin.
I would sacrifice the seasons to slave away
under your sun, yet you abandon me unapologetically
once the summer month is done.