by Kate Ward '23 on September 8, 2022
Portfolio Co-Editor

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Creative Non-Fiction

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Most people would say that there isn’t anything funny about death or losing a loved one however, when my grandfather passed I ended up inheriting what turned out to be something quite funny. My grandfather used to drive a red 2008 Cadillac, it has four seats and it belongs down in Miami with an eighty-year-old behind the wheel headed towards their weekly solitaire game. Or it should have some mid-fifty-year-old man shouting Billy Joel lyrics on the way to a seven a.m. tee time. My family and I call this car the red rocket. Despite being fairly old, this car is (what my Mom would call) zippy. 

So, once summer hit I started taking the rocket to work, windows down, music up. The music that flowed from the car was everything but what an eighty-year-old in Miami would listen to. It was an eclectic mix of Bad Bunny, Steely Dan, ABBA, Logic, Kendrick, and the occasional Piece the Veil song. A twenty-year-old driving her grandfather’s car, heading to work at a children’s art camp. It’s ridiculous. My Mom got frequent text messages along the lines of “Saw Kate driving the caddy today!”
To that I would respond, “Okay but did they like the Bad Bunny I was playing?”

Like any teenager or young adult with the ability to drive and a fast car to do so, I started abusing the power gifted to me from my grandfather. I ended up buying an absurd amount of snacks and ice cream which earned a laugh from my Mom as I would pull into the driveway, Efecto by Bad Bunny thrumming out of the window. She thought it was incredibly ridiculous and my Dad thought it was great because he ended up bumming some of my snacks. 

Aside from working at the art camp, I also worked as a nanny. The two kids, ages six and two, were immediately obsessed with the car and decorating it. They also wanted to be driven everywhere (that did not happen). The two year old, every day on our walk would see some other red car and immediately shout out “Kate’s car!”
Wrong. If there isn’t a bag of Spicy Doritos (the purple bag, of course) in the passenger seat and a flat Celsius in the cupholder, then that isn’t mine. I remember when I first started driving the rocket around, I desperately wanted to make it my own. After getting a phone holder and Aux cord,  I wanted stickers and trinkets to hang off of my rearview mirror. Towards the end of the summer, my StabiliTrak and braking system needed to be serviced. My Dad got in the car and looked around, pointed at the moth sticker on my glovebox, and asked, “What is that?”
“Moth sticker from art camp,” I replied with a smile. 

He chuckles a little and shakes his head before pulling away.

I’d like to hope that my grandfather is looking on and laughing from wherever he is and not cursing my name for decorating his beloved sports car and playing music you “can’t sing to,” as my grandmother would say. 

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

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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 The Cowl Editor on September 8, 2022

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Sarah McLaughlin ’23

On the couch, we talked about everything and nothing. A number of things I’d remember, and a number of things I already forget. The movie watched and other movies, the songs we heard and other music, the things we liked about our grandparents and the things we hated, how many of them were still alive, how many memories we had of them taking care of us in our childhoods, the earliest things we could remember, the things we tended to forget, the names and faces from our teenage years we already couldn’t place, what we thought the trajectory of the world might be, what our city might look like in five years, ten years, twenty, whether or not we’d ever want to go to space.

It amazed me how mundane conversations could be, and how easily they could become captivating. It scared me, too, how even in those mundane moments, my attention was captivated by the most unimaginative things, like the curve of her eyebrows, or the way she pronounced piano, or how the shadow above her collarbone changed shape as she shifted.

This was infatuation, I realized, in the hours I spent with her there. It wasn’t seeing someone as larger-than-life, as completely flawless, as the pinnacle of human beauty. It was noticing imperfections and being obsessed with them—not to fix them, like missing punctuation in an essay, but to notice them, understand them, commit them to memory. to see them not as flaws needing correction but as small pieces of a whole, to understand that whole as greater than the sum of its parts.

It wasn’t writing love songs and drawing hearts around their name, it was counting freckles and the ums between sentences.

by The Cowl Editor on September 8, 2022

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Dear Tiff and Earl, 

The first (official) darty of the semester is coming up, and my roommate and I still haven’t managed to find a solid friend group to accompany us. Any advice for quickly making friends so that we can live out our darty dreams?

Sincerely, 

Future Darty Crasher

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Dear FDC,

If you really want to wow the crowds, don’t worry about making friends before the darty—make them AT the darty! Just blunder in, latch on to someone, and thank them and all their friends for coming to YOUR little soirée. Jay Gatsby would approve!

Cheers! 

Tiff

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Dear Future Darty Crasher, 

Who says you need a big friend group to go to a darty? Have an intense pregame in your room, convince your roommate to explore Eaton Street with you, and rock the darty with confidence! As long as you follow the darty’s general theme, you’re sure to find a group of darty-loving people to adopt you and your roommate into their friend group!

Crush Your Darty Dreams!

Earl

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

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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 The Cowl Editor on September 8, 2022

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Worst Things To Hear During Syllabus Week

• “We’ll start class today with a quiz/pop quiz”
• “I don’t like to give out As”
• “Okay class, let’s take out the reading!”
• “No unexcused absences”
• “We won’t have breaks during class” (it’s a marathon class)
• “The final for this class will count for over half of your grade”
• “Attendance is required for this class”
• “No tech”
• “There’s gonna be a final paper and exam”
• “Barely anybody has passed this class before”
• “I will be cold calling”
• “Participation is worth 40% of your final grade”
• “Let’s do an ice breaker”

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

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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.

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

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An obnoxious yellow tag stands out on my black bathing suit,
The neon color disgusting me when I discover it;
My nails dig into the dirty label,
Trying but failing to rip it off,
As it stubbornly sticks to the dark suit.

Finally, I shed this label,
Yet I still feel the judging stares of others.
My bathing suit is clear of tags,
But not free from scrutiny,
As looks of disgust are continuously thrown my way.

Despite changing out of the sticky swimsuit,
Eyes still dig through my back,
Rendering my baby blue coverup pointless,
As their stares leave me naked,
Exposed to humanity’s harsh gaze.

Glancing in my mirror,
I try to find the answers to their stares.
Why do people keep staring at me?
I wonder, not noticing the bright label on my forehead,
Begging people to keep showering me with attention.

by trogers5 on May 5, 2022

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Dear Tiff and Earl,

I just downloaded LinkedIn and I don’t know how to polish my resume. Please send help, so I don’t spend the rest of my life living in my mom’s basement.

Thank You In Advance, 

Jobless Senior 

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Dear Jobless Senior,

Looks like someone didn’t take “Don’t wait, Slavin 108” to heart. You’ve had four years to take advantage of this ever-helpful, high-quality service, and now, with two weeks left before graduation, you have the audacity to ask me for advice? Better get used to those basement views, buddy.

Regards,

Earl

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Dear Jobless Senior,

You are asking the wrong people. We don’t even get paid to give you advice. Luckily, I love my mom’s basement. I have trained the mice to scavenge three meals a day for me, and I am building a rocket to the moon. What more can you ask of life?

Cheers,

Tiff

 

by trogers5 on May 5, 2022

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by Mariela Flores ‘23 

This Poem is for my best friend.

A goodbye is near, it lingers in our air.

I feel the goodbye when we share a meal in a comfortable silence––

I feel the goodbye during late nights when all I want is to absorb any time

I have left with you.

It is dramatic to say my life will change when you are off

seeing, feeling, experiencing all new things,

you will have a new rhythm, a new song.

I will not know the words.

You will grow into the person I’ve always known you could be

and you will meet new people whom you will dance with

until your feet are tired, and your cheeks are flushed

with the feeling of this new life. And I will watch from afar.

This is not a bitter end. You are not going far.

But I will miss all the nights, mornings, evenings, minutes, days

hours, seconds, all the time we had together in this place that never quite felt

like home until I knew you were in it. Friend.

Here’s to you and all lines you’ve crossed.

Here’s to the cries, the fights, the feeling that kept you in bed

and the sun that took you out of it. Here’s to it all.

I will not say goodbye.

But I will say I miss you.

As

      you

             cross

                        the

                                  stage

with your head held up high, I will smile.

And I will capture the moment and keep it pressed to the inside of

my mind. I miss you. The world is lucky to have you in it––

I am luckier to have known you for a lifetime, for a moment, for a time.