4

May

4

May

MAY blooming

”

Vestigial Year is monthly literature, photography, poetry, and art. In May, we are all blooming.

“

1

non. Grown Ups

Max Rochman

He sits in the station, waiting patiently for his train. He sits there, in uniform, with a cup of warm coffee to his left. Every week it's the same cardboard cup with the same plastic top. After each sip, each week, his peripheral vision reads the same sentence: "Caution Hot."

He is the epitome of maturity. He is the icon of mediocrity. He is the same exact person as every other person who bought that cardboard cup of coffee.

Yet he is not. When he sits there, he does not think of the minutes left before the train. He does not think about how many hours of sleep he got. Nor does he think about how many days are left until the next cardboard cup.

He thinks of someone. He sits, waiting for a string of four-to-five words to light up the screen in his lap. He thinks about how insignificant these words will be - the mundane, nearly-scripted words she may write back.

But those words are poems to him. They are sonnets, and songs, and prayers. For they are from her. And as little as she may say, those words bring seconds of happiness. Those clips of ever-fleeting time that help with those hours of sleep and those days in-between the next cardboard cup.

He thinks about bitten fingernails and what they feel like slowly being dragged against soft skin. He thinks about teeth and what they look like when softly biting lower lips. And eyelashes and how they feel being brushed off of cheekbones.

What makes him different is infatuation, even if infatuation comes in strings of four-or-five words.

2

non. Gardens and How to Grow Them

Do you remember five years old?How fairytales dripped from your fingers like pinky promisesand Peter Pan preached a chorus of “I’ll never grow up” from the pages you clung to—

Which is to say you never wanted to stop believing—Which is to say there was a possibility you couldstop believing—

I have always been a fist full of hope in the form of a bouquet of flowers plucked right from the ground, grownups always told me when you do this you kill the life in them,I guess I never learned, no one ever told me all the hope withers when you cut it from its roots, and I cannot remember where my belief in the future sprang fromor how to water its seeds again,

Mama, do you remember a wide-eyed little girl in pigtails who held her father’s hand like she’d never heard his voice raised, like she didn’t know him doctor who had not saved every patient he’d tried to,like she never knew hurt in the form of lonely Friday nights covered in cigar smoke from adult poker games, tobacco pipes more abundant than smiles,

pipedreams of a life worth holding onto,do you remember who you were before this world prescribedthe only pages of the dictionary it wanted you to fit on—

Papa, I am so much more jaded than you think I am, and I am tired of handing pieces of myself to everyone who walks through the door of my life that I somehow still leave so wide open, but every day I wake, I still give them all the benefit of the doubtlike there isn’t a voice inside my head screaming no,like there isn’t a voice inside my head that says you’ve given away too many pieces, what’s left of you for yourself?

Tell me, do you remember five years old?Whenever someone hurts me, I imagine they are just four.Hopscotching on the sidewalk in perfect time to the beat of their heartlike the rhythm is foolproof.

Whenever I love someone, I imagine them cold dirt floor.Not pedestal. Not miraculous. Not something highlike expectationsor adrenalineor my favorite shoes hanging from a telephone wire.

3

When I love you, I remind myself you have learned daggersand have at some points been Pinocchio,I know you broke a girl’s heart in high school,and that you’ve been the iceberg that sunk the ship at least once,know you’ve trespassed into secret gardens,set off all the alarms, and taken the prettiest poppies and rose petals.But I remind myself I’ve done all this too.

That it’s human. That human,at its most basic dictionary level definition is discovering—Whether it’s believing in someone so muchthat you forget they’ve killed,both parts of themselves, and others,

or losing one of your favorite things because you thought it a good idea to sling it to see if it could reach the moonor sharp words, tones, knivesthat yes, you’ve used in defense, shed blood in the process, or have grown a long nose from speaking words you badly wanted to believe, but that no one else did,or crushing the canals of love coursing through someone else

just to save your own heart,or that you needed to be the iceberg to save someone from drowning a much worse way,or that the flowers from the garden were a last wish of a dying dream,you didn’t have the choice not to steal them.

I can no longer look at people like they are criminals when I imagine all this, I close my eyes and again I am in the back yard in Massachusetts with a riverbed and twinkling fairy lights that fuel my knowledge that Neverland exists,and picking flowers doesn’t kill them, it just gives someone a personal brand of promise right next to their window, if only for a short time,I close my eyes and remember the hope I felt at five years old,how I saw the swirls from Starry Night in everyone’s eyesand knew there must be a garden growing in everyone,even buried deep.

4

con.

Elly Belle

20 years old and I do not always remember how to believe.The roots of my hope have all been cut and sold and bouqueted without permission.But I am learning how to forgive. How to plant my own seeds.How to be okay with a garden that everyone keeps taking from.

5

6

non. Pup

He’ll never leave your side,That wet nose,With his eyes opened wide.

The one you’ll comfort,The one you’ll hold, In sickness and in health, Until you both grow old.

Life isn’t the same when you have him to take care of,To feed and to play with,But most importantly to love.

To love on rainy nights,When the earth is quiet,To love in the summer heat,With lots of watermelon in our diet.

Someone to love more every day,The ties will only grow stronger,Even when he’s far away.

Time spent together I’d never give up,He’s the most loyal companion,A perfect pup.

Sarah Carpenter

7

non. Mirror - Touch

The light that grazes your skin washes over me.

A breath enters your lungsand I feel okay.

The unknown,when seen through the eyes of another,seems a much more inviting place.

Eric Gonzalez

8

non. Let’s Everybody Do the Old Concrete Pneumatic

David Yurman

I cuff my jeans once-twice but I wait until I get on the downtown M because I don't have a full-length mirror in the house and instead I use the murky windows set within those rattling doors to check my reflection before I make a judgement-call about whether or not to show the raging summer my wispy ankles.

I buy red-eyes because coffee just doesn't do it for me anymore.

I stop withering for just one-second when I pass parkside ice cream trucks because I was happier when I was younger.

I admire the old because the old were once young and the young went spelunking down freshly-carved subway-tunnels and tagged immortality on the walls.

I wonder if anyone has ever died with a spray-can in their hand, crushed below Our Fordist wheels, hot and alone beneath the concrete skin of Our Rotted Earth.

I think about those blue traffic lights in the subway and how if they had had eyes they would have seen the best of us and the worst of us, in turn, go thundering to our deaths.

I confess: hell is real and we built it all.

I pretend that I am a bright light on the wall and I shine the cold light of seeing on everyone.

I do not remove my backpack when I board the train because I am a dick.

I do not watch the gap between the train and the platform because I know the gap is there and I forgot to care about it long ago.

I do not sit on the train because if I do not sit, I will never have a seat to offer.

I look at people on the subway because we were all born to be stared at.

I imagine the history of all our forgotten subway warriors. Why no one knows their names.

I cuff my jeans once-twice but I wait until I get on the Queens-bound R because I do not have a full-length mirror in the house and I have become very good at it because I have precious few seconds between ThisIs23rdStreetCourtSquare and PleaseStandClearOfTheClosingDoors and every time I kneel to adjust my faded hems I risk the abrupt jolt of the car knocking me off my feet but I have not fallen yet.

I am the only full-length mirror I own and I check my reflection in me.

9

10

12

11

non. A Dewdrop Laughter

but lord let her laughtercome like waves towards mebecause I could have sworn seas part like lipsand rose bud hipsgrow nearer the sun when her eyes shine and things make sense when her heart dances across her face,

as if the whole world was new,as if salt water had never touched my tongue,

as if silenceand her breathingwere the only things to exist.

Elly Belle

13

14

Vestigial YearMay

DesignEditPg 1Pg 2Pg 3Pg 4Pg 5Pg 6Pg 7Pg 8Pg 9

Pg 10Pg 11Pg 12

James FitzgeraldDavid YurmanRachel RosenfeldMax Rochman

Elly Belle

Hannah Hahn

Hannah HahnSarah CarpenterEric GonzalezDavid Yurman

Pg 13Pg 14

Elly BelleRachel Rosenfeld

The feature of this issue is Blue and Yellow for David Letterman