don't leave
don't leave
don't leave

Sonam Kaloti
Arts Editor

 

“IT wanna be with you all day
when | wake up and fall asleep,"
oh dear, we're falling off the deep
end. I continue to downplay

my feelings. "Can't wait for Monday,"
lay me down, backseat of your jeep.
“IT wanna be with you all day

when | wake up and fall asleep,"

the floor is red, now. You don't say?
The knife was cheap—one single sweep
tang of metal, heart in one piece.
Sorry... just wanted you to stay;

I wanna be with you all day.

 

 

My parents

> A fictional story, part two

Morgan Hannah
Life & Style Editor

 

ands down, my parents prepared me for adulthood better than anyone else ever could. I

learned to not talk back, to eat all my vegetables or I'd never be a grown-up, and that a bottle

of wine makes the best gift for every occasion—including recovering alcoholic Aunt Agatha's

birthday—and if the lawnmower cuts off my toes, don't come runnin’ to mama. I learned that I
wasn't born ina barn, I just lived like it—and that the Purple Death was not a plague, but rather an
unusual rough-as-guts wine with the distinctive bouquet of horse shit and old train tickets... best
drunk after you're already drunk and with clenched teeth, so as to prevent the ingestion of foreign

bodies.

My friends were always jealous that I didn't have to go to church, because my parents could
teach me everything I needed to know themselves. My lesson on receiving from my mother, “You're
gonna get it when we get home,’ and communion with my father at the Bavaria Haus—we'd break
bread, dip it in oil and vinegar, and partake of the blood of Christ that way. It tasted like old tea

leaves and burnt cat hair, and left us singin’ “Je-e-esus Christ.”

Girl Guides were a breeze with my father's help. He educated me on how to deliver the best
sales pitch: “Dark as David Fincher, this beautiful fair-trade chocolate unwinds waves of hovercraft
oil and notes of bramble, blackberry, boysenberry, Don Cherry, and Franken Berry from a
mountaintop parcel of land in the coast. A brooding mistress of devilish wonder. Good with pork
and pancakes, or as an evening treat, this chocolate bar will make you wonder what you're doing

with your life.”

Yes, growing up with my parents, I felt loved. I really did. They would always tell me the nicest
things and make sure I knew just how lucky they felt to have a kid like me, like the time my mother
said “one day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you, then you'll see what it's like.”

 

Ts
. ae