Is it the truth? The men by the fire asked me.

It is what I remember, I replied.

But is it the truth? They asked.

Not at all, I answered. Just like your own. But I digress.

My mother the witch was once a woman, too, as fair as I am – do not tutt me. There is no crime in knowing one’s power, only in exercising it to ill end, or in ill company.

And was she no longer a woman, when she became a witch? What, if not a woman, could she be?

Why, Sir, would you burn a woman?

I’ve been burned by one before. Why not?

You have a sharp wit, Sir. But I mean only to say that they treated her as less than a woman when she became a witch, not that she changed in anything but action. Long before they wrote warts and wrinkles over her face, she was a woman, and my mother. For long hours we would sit together by the firelight, her hand brushing my hair, gently, until I fell asleep on her lap.

Before she was a witch. Before she had the power?

She always had the power.

Then wasn’t she always a witch?

Will you let me tell my story, damn it?

He apologizes. Go on.

My mother and I sat together for hours and hours before the fire. We let it soak into us, and sometimes she would take a piece of the flames and make it dance for me, like a little man. (I did not know then, of course, what they were.) I sat with her and sometimes she let me braid her long dark hair, so much more elegant than my coarse brown tangle, and for hours sometimes I would watch as she painted her lips the red of the bloody cherrry.

Why do you paint yourself, mother? I would ask. You are already so lovely.

Men are unkind to women who know that they are lovely, she would say. And to women who are unlovely. And to women who try to be lovely.

Are you trying to be lovely?

No, she would say, and finish the line of coal above her lashes. I am trying to look like death.

Is death lovely, mother? I ask.

No, she replied. But it is irresistible.

It was my eleventh birthday. And down my mother went from our hut, leaving me in rooms with furniture strangely small, the seven rooms so quaintly empty. Her cape fluttered behind her, a sky blue against the snow.

She did not return until the next night, and this time she came as an old woman knocking at the door. I knew it was her from her perfume – my father was a huntsman, after all – but all the same, I was scared.

Little girl, little girl, let me in, she called. I said nothing, watching the window with frightened eyes. I’ve apples to sell. You can’t know how good they’ll taste. Fresh, crunchy, sweet-smelling apples.

I ran up to the second story and peered out the window, my eyes narrowed.

Mom, those are off our own tree! I exclaimed, astounded, and the old woman looked to the second story window before throwing her head back and cackling.

Never could fool you, my mother said, her wrinkled flesh fading back to its usual cream. Never could.

The next time I met my mother in disguise she wore a better one – none of that vaudeville witchery, this time. This time she appeared as a student in my class on the first day of high school, sitting beside me on the bus to school, and offered me a smoking cigarette.

It keeps you thin, she’d said.

And smells like shit, I’d replied, and I pulled the better brand out of my coat, offering her one. These are much better.

My mother fell out of the seat, her glamour fading with her laughter.

Never could fool you, she’d said. Never could.

And yet you don’t stop trying, do you?

I sit by the window of my college dorm, brushing out my hair. It is still the first week, but my roommate has snapped at me and I think I may be in love with someone who may not – who does not – love me back. I am weeping, watching my face in the mirror. What doesn’t he see in me? My mother was so lovely, unreal in her loveliness, really. Every man who met her loved her. Even the woodsman sent to kill her loved her. How awful must I be, that not even a man who knows me, really knows me, can love me?

In the mirror the brush is in another woman’s hand. I watch it rise and fall, my mother’s hands, as she strokes my hair, begins to braid it, softly sings.

Mom, I say softly, but she shakes her head, still singing, brushing back my hair with what should be my own hands. Mom, is that you? Her eyes are too wide, and I realize my mistake. I turn to see the upraised knife, the brilliant flash of pearly teeth, and let myself fall backwards over my chair onto the floor, kicking the chair towards the – the thing – as I scramble backwards. I bump into the mirror and it begins to fall, quickly, so quickly it almost catches me but hits the the thing instead. I fall back against the wall, my eyes rolling upwards for a moment, as it shudders and spasms and writhes and stops, suddenly, the last seizing deathroe of a wildcat. I stagger upwards, my heart beating like a war drum. My roommate opens the door, stops in the doorway.

What is it? She asks, staring at the creature. She covers her mouth with her hand. Did she come out of the mirror?

I don’t know, I reply, breathing hard. I… I look at my roommate, frowning. Too acute. Mom? I asked, and she raised her eyebrows, her suddenly dark and delicate lashes overshadowing cornflower blue eyes. Mom, did you put that there?

No, she replied. But I couldn’t keep it out, could I?

Did… did I put it there? I asked.

No, she said quietly. No.

Then what was it? I asked. She looked at me, her perfect face as cold as her name.

A curse, she said.

What kind? I asked.

The inherited kind, she replied, and was gone as soon as she’d come, the only difference between her arrival and her parting my made bed and new-washed sheets, the body gone, of course – a witch for sure, my mother.

Is it the truth? The men ask. Did all that really happen?

Yes, I reply. It is the truth.

But what kind? They ask, suddenly cautious. For all stories can be called truth, in firelight, in the reflections on men’s eyes.

The inherited kind. Just like your own.

When asked how to make one’s children more intelligent, Einstein is credited as saying, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” An inspiring quote, since I find myself very late in life to be completely addicted to fairy tales. I read and reread the Little Red Riding Hood Story, consuming the conservative Perrault’s, which warns the young and impressionable young woman against dangerous men; the sublime Roald Dahl’s, in which Little Red “smiles… one eyelid flickers… / she whips a pistol from her knickers / she aims it at the creature’s head / And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead”, the 1997 short in which the wolf is played by a male ballerina, a Mexican version in which Little Red cuts her way out of the wolf, Angela Carter’s Company of Wolves. I search with the fervor and obsession of the truly religion, but cannot find what I am looking for — the feeling of recognition and revelation of truth we sometimes feel in art. In Perrault, I see the sexism of the story at its strongest, and realize, in the words of writer Theodora Goss, that “the hunter is also a wolf.” I find in the story a dependence on men that irks me and reminds me of my male friends’ words that a man’s duty was to protect a woman. “From who?” I resisted asking. “From other men?” The woodsman and the wolf seem in many ways the same, and the woodsman is not restricted from the woods the way Little Red is, is he? If anything, he is the one who builds the path that leads to the death and destruction Little Red finds at the end of the path. The terrorist creates the necessity of the law; the “representative” legislates; and they work together to punish those who break the laws they made together and keep the rest in fear. I remember one of my Iranian friends telling me in high school that the cops in her area used to rape women who didn’t wear their headscarves to teach them a lesson — wear these to protect yourselves against men? Wasn’t that the cops’ jobs? (Nothing against those who wear headscarves or hijabs, by the way — women should be able to wear what they damn well please.)

Too much is missing in these fairy tales. The originals, at least, contained the lurking violence of reality — the blood as wine, naked Red against the sheets. A warning against marrying outside the tribe, or a feminist cry: “look who you’re in bed with, women! You thought it was your grandmother, but it was the wolf, the enforcer of your grandmother’s law.” The originals were explicitly implicit, too disturbing to be simple and more easily understood because of it. Still, they need sequels. Little Red builds her own path, or is chopped up by the woodcutter; Snow White becomes the wicked queen’s successor, as she was always intended to do, challenged as she was with society’s imposing beauty — the poisoned comb, bodice, and apple all symbols of the corruption of womanhood; Cinderella oppresses as she was oppressed, or does not. I want to know more about the witch, especially. Was she, once, one of them? Why is she always wicked, the only powerful woman in these stories? (Besides the wicked stepmother, of course.) She tries to destroy Snow White as a queen, to eat Hansel and Gretel, steals Rapunzel, takes Ariel’s voice, and curses cruel men in Beauty and the Beast and The Frog Prince. Vain, hungry, lonely, vengeful, business-like, she not only foils our heroines but acts as a foil as to what they could be, if they fail their quests. All the same, they often show much greater agency, and are almost universally punished for it. The only powerful woman in any of these stories that comes to mind is the fairy godmother, but even she must be inhuman and bumbling, a powerplayer turned into a ditz. I find myself rooting for the witch as I reread the stories, reimagining Maleficent in the wake of the new movie and Wicked. I remember the lines the witch sings in Into the Woods, my favorite part of the musical: “You’re so nice. You’re not good, You’re not bad, You’re just nice. I’m not good, I’m not nice, I’m just right. I’m the Witch. You’re the world!” The witch, in turn, reminds me of Shylock — owed a pound of flesh and never given one. As inhuman as the request was, mustn’t we pay our debts in the real world? And does not a witch bleed? I think of how the greats of our world started by feeling inferior, how Tina Fey says she learned comedy as a defense mechanism. How low must the witch have started, to have risen so high, become so powerful? Must she sacrifice her children, as so many of the stories seem to suggest? Is that what the writers sought to demonize, these “selfish” (to borrow from our feminist buddy Pope Francis) women who refuse to have children?

Perhaps that’s it, the fairy tale I’ve been looking for, and never found: “The Making of the Witch.” A fairy tale rendition of Zimbardo’s Lucifer Effect, but without Wicked’s moral padding. Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market, but without the convenient, pseudo-sexual recovery to purity. What happens when the witch finally gets what she wanted? I don’t want victims, villains, or heroines, and the witch won’t bother me with them, because only she, of all these women, can protect herself.

She’s the only one who, at the end of the fairy tale, can be both whole and alone.

Some pieces by Dora Goss very well worth reading:
http://endicottstudio.typepad.com/poetrylist/what-her-mother-said-by-theodora-goss.html
http://theodoragoss.com/2015/06/29/snow-white-learns-witchcraft/

Safe and sound, ma cherie. I am in my dorm room, my feet and back aching, completely exhausted but essentially unpacked. I’ve chatted with a bunch of the girls in some of the programs, and they all seem very nice.

Flew in Saturday afternoon, with a long walk to immigrations, where I chatted with a British gentleman about his last visit to Boston, his running habit. Hopped aboard the Underground, where I listened amusedly to two incredibly obnoxious young girls entertain themselves, their mother stony-faced with exhaustion. Got off at Knightsbridge (the names here either sound medieval or obscene — Picadilly, Cockfoster) and wandered down a ritzy Boulevard looking for my BnB. Got a bit lost and a nice older couple, Olivia and Nigel, helped me out, although when I finally made it to the BnB the key didn’t work and I ended up staying with the couple for English Breakfast and Lapsong Souchong with milk, biscuits, and arriving relatives. Lovely home — old-fashioned but recently added on to, lots of white and blue and gold. One of the arrivals was a writer with several published books on the shelves, as low key, depressed and cynical as writers tend to be. He and Nigel reminded me, as those of Irish blood like to, that most great English writers are actually Irish writers — Oscar Wilde, for instance. I prodded him about what he was working on, and he gave me a dry look. “Do you have a few weeks?” He asked.

Anyhow, they were incredibly sweet and made me feel right at home. When my landlady, Margaret, finally arrived, she and her two dashunds greeted me and I carried my bags the long way up to the third story. Pale purple flowers on the wallpaper, and a whole floor essentially to myself, the bathroom prestocked with makeup sponges, lavender and magnolia talcum paper, multicolored towels in shades of yellow and purple and white. My room was small but very well-stocked, with a mini-fridge and TV in a cupboard and a closet that included two bathrobes, one thin and white like a slip and a longer, thicker one in dark green and gold. Two tea cups and a kettle with tea bags, hot chocolate mix, etc., as well as mixing spoons with writing on them. The one I chose (quite by accident) said “Sexy,” along the top. Spotty wifi, unfortunately, but after some effort I figured out how to use my universal charger. After lying in a weary daze for some time, I showered, dressed in a black sweater dress and my china blue scarf with a sweep of lipstick and went out in search of fun and food, perusing the boulevard and the Harrods (very fancy department store) until I came to a “Tea Room,” where I ordered the baked chicken penne and chose a truffle from the window display. I chatted a tiny bit with the presumably French waitress, telling her about Chocolat, which I finished on the plane (along with West Side Story, actually.) When I finished, I brought home the remainder of the truffle to work on, very slowly, for the next half an hour, and slowly curled into a ball on my pillow (beds are harder than rocks around here, by the way), telling myself I would only close my eyes for a moment. I woke up an hour after, convinced it must be morning. I perused the internet for a few minutes, chatted with friends in Boston about a possible skype and my first day, and then fell back to sleep, this time wish my face and teeth clean. I woke to my alarm at 8:30, packed and primped, and then went downstairs. I had a sumptuous breakfast of warm toast and various types of jam, English tea with milk, an egg sunny side up, raspberries and cut strawberries, and cereal with milk, all the while chatting wearily with my hostess and the new guest as the dogs vied for my affection.

Finding the program was more difficult than anticipated, as the labeling was especially bad. I found one program building but couldn’t get in, and finally ran into an acquaintance on the street who gave me some advice for finding the other. This door was also locked, but luckily manned from the inside, and I was let in by a lovely Brazilian man named Davi, my new RA. I checked in with Michel, my London contact, Allison, the program coordinator, and met my other RA, Rita. They asked for papers I had left with my things at the BnB, so I made my way back to grab them. It was quite a walk. I paid my landlady (please send cash for that — 120 pounds, so 182.03 dollars) and met her handyman of 20 years, Brian. We chatted, discussing his daughter, 20 years old, who studies art design and works with cloth from time to time, as well as dogs generally, London versus New York (I walked a good bit faster than most Londoners, even as more of a Bostonian.) Then I walked the seven blocks back, dragging my suitcases and slowly wilting into the pavement. I imagined myself a warrior those blocks, even as I stopped every half-block to pant, whimper, half-collapse. Finally I made it back, checked in, carried my suitcases up (note: second floor in Britain = third floor in America, and thank God Almighty there was an elevator.) I unpacked with great haste, as I had set the suitcases on the bed in a moment of motivational madness. My cell and a packet of introductory papers were on my bed. My roommate, from the writing on her bags, is certainly from an Asian country rather than Asian American. Either South Korea or Vietnam, we’ll see. She remains elusive,and I haven’t seen her yet, although her bags are open and her things spread mostly neatly around her side of the room. I said hi to Violet, who had to run, came up, looked around frantically to see if I had a similar meeting, finished unpacking when I realized I did not. I had a kitchen meeting where we discussed basics, relaxed a bit, went down to grab lunch (a salmon quiche, as well as an almond and apple tart). I ate them in the lounge, introducing myself to some Education students, as well as a few students interested in the walking tour. About 90% of the students are women, most with the internship program for COM or CGS. I went on the walking tour, enjoying chatting with new people, but my feet ached so badly that I ended up leaving early. Soon I will go out with Violet and Zoe to dinner, and tomorrow I will wake up at 7:30, as most of my days will begin at 9am. Grocery shopping and school supplies are as yet unpurchased, but I’ll have to put that on the list — we have a kitchen, but we have not yet divided up the space, as the RAs seem intent on making us divvy it up. Guests are not allowed, and very strictly — something about a woman being pushed off of a balcony? Sorry Kath.

(My room at the BnB)

Anyway, I’m off to get food, but I love you very much, I’m safe, and I’m loving London.

With affection,
Lydia Erickson

monsters do not
beneath beds hide
but under king’s cloaks
daylit ride

Oh Lord, I need an angel
Oh, Lord, I need a prayer
Oh, Lord, send me an angel
to take me from here to there.

Lord, I know I’ve used you wrongly,
Lord, I know I’m wrought with sin
Lord, I know I’m frought with folly,
But let me be and the devil wins.

Lord, I’ll go and let you in if
Lord, you do me just one right
Lord, I may repent if you just
keep me from myself tonight.

Sit with me and I’ll be merry
brimming with sweet warmth and light
Talk with me and I’ll be smiling
while we wile away the night

Lord, bring me a little peace
sprinkled from that bright above
Bring that boon, the best investment
love that makes more in its love

Lord, do not you too forsake me
Lord, leave not thy child to hate
for late have been my nights and lonely
long since from thy table ate

Lord, stay thee, as a comfort
Lord, rest thee, as a friend,
in this barren lonely desert,
let my wandering fin’ly end.

Dare I pluck
stars from the sky
brightshining globes
Fat fruits
that drip starlight
and wet the grass
like dusk’s dew
Dare I wash my hair
with starlight?
Dare I dance, unabashed
basking in the unsunny
strange romance of nighttime?
What dare I utter?
What dare I do
when the world tree
bends
and stars droop upon my table.

On nights like these
I lie awake
And I can feel the whole world shake
With Might-Have-Been and
Should-Have-Done
And what if I had
Been the one?
And while I wait for sleep to come
I know
That I would have and
Will always
Choose just the same
And lose at any other game
(For what is luck but superstition?
And superstition, as I like to say,
Brings rotten luck. I am
too stubborn
for God’s mercy.)
Would you
Build a house of cards
With me? Or a castle
In the sand. Who cares
If it washes away? Everything
Washes away,
Glittering while wet.

I remember reading Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge” well, though I hardly enjoyed it. He wrote with a thick style — dense, voluminous, oddly viscous — and the subtext became so insistent near the end I felt as though I was being beaten across the brow with a very fine hammer. I do remember parts, however, and one part in particular has stuck with me.

I remember one character, I believe the mayor himself, became sad and began to walk. He gravitated towards the places he associated with sorrow, where people down on their luck tended to linger. The city physically represented the places inside of him, and by walking those paths he represented his own feelings. I have known women to show changes inside of them through changes in their hair or the way they dress, but no one ever talks about the way our feet follow memories — perhaps because when we walk in those moods, we are really only walking somewhere else, and using the physical path to illuminate the other.

Similarly, I think we choose to travel new places because of what we want to be, at least while we are still young enough and naive enough to believe that a place can change who you are. Not that it can’t – where you live always changes you, but not in some sudden, magical way. The changes come slowly, painfully, not like the seasonal peeling of the manzanita but through a process of deliberate, brutal self-sculpting. What people told you would “just happen” does not just happen. Even recognized and consequentially broken, glass ceilings leave stairs covered in pointed shards. Place does not change us, but it offers us a ground upon which to change ourselves. The suburb offers safety; the city offers choice; the country offers privacy. None offer new identities, although they do offer new starts.

I came to Boston because Boston was more exciting than Santa Barbara and less exciting than New York. I wanted a coming-of-age-adventure with a pre-engineered happy ending (“wanted”) – to be grownup, a college student — two ideas not at all paradoxical at the time — not to get what I wanted but to know what I wanted. My suburb’s manicured streets had begun to wrap around my neck and choke me, the only sound in that idyllic calm the periodic shriek of the train. When I came to the city, I heard it buzzing and thought, maybe here I could breathe. I could happen. I could become.

I did not know the city then as I do now – not as someone you become, but as a stranger you get to know.

The city is the neighbor you love to hate, who tells you he’ll grow on you, like fungi. He is not like my hometown, a tiger mother presiding over her people in a way that in another place, and another time, might be mistaken as benign. He does not watch from the hills, combing the city for failure or distinction with perfect, claw-like hands. He urges hard work, but not as she urged it, as a replacement and a promise of some greater affection, something which would permit belonging. He does not cut you down like grass when you peak above the others, trying to see outside the perfect square, and tell you that if you work hard enough, you may one day be happy, or even successful.

Funny how the children killed themselves with trains, the very things they could have used to get the hell out of there. Here’s my advice, to those of you still stuck there, and those of you considering that option: get on the train, instead of in front of it. This is the first stop in a long, long line of stops, and at the end is the place that you were meant to be. Home is the last stop on the end of the tracks. It isn’t here, and it isn’t now. You’ll make a few bad stops, sure – you choose your failures and you own them, just as you own your successes. That’s what living means. You do it for yourself, and you choose your regrets. They will not have to do with your grades, or the college you got into. They will have to do with the people you didn’t ask out and the people you didn’t punch in the face. The things you didn’t do, but never the times you decided to board the train.

But back to the city, that dirty scum bastard. Judgmental, though he never really gives a shit one way or the other – he mostly judges to keep up a good conversation, frankly. Sometimes he knocks on the window at night, smoking a cigar he puts out in your African violets, and asks you for wine. He glitters in the darkness, odd and enchanting enough that you give him the bottle and ignore his comments about the brand, before you toddle off to bed, shaking your head. “Fucker thinks he’s hot shit, doesn’t he?” He drives you a little mad, certainly, but when he runs into you, you can run into him right back. He’ll flip you off, of course, but later he’ll come by, dirty as the day he was born, and visit you. He’ll chat you up about whatever scandal’s on the news, whatever art is at the MFA, and all the while shake you down for loose quarters, minutes, naps. He’ll step out to buy you coffee, spit in it, and hand it back to you. Does he love you? Does he want to kill you. Did he just forget your first name?

He’s an odd son of a bitch, the city, and he ain’t a cheap habit, but when you’re with him, you’re free. Grass springs out of cracks in the pavement and people are just astonished it survived at all. When people call you weird, they all have a completely different, equally bizarre concept of normal in mind. Walk around the city. He’s not yours, as you thought he would be, and the streets aren’t places in yourself waiting to be found, at least not yet. He’s someone you have to get to know, and like all good friends (and shitty neighbors), he challenges you. He pushes, you push back. Eventually you find a style, an equilibrium – a way of interacting with the city, with others, with life that is fiercer and more resolute than it was before. You learn to live in the dirt and stumble, because if you weren’t willing to stumble there’d be no point in leaving the house, the pavement’s too damn uneven. Some days, what makes the stumbling worth it is there for you, at the end of the path. Some days, you just have to remind yourself that the stumbling is your own. Some days, your friend trips, and you laugh so hard that then you’re both on the ground and the city is pretending he can’t see you because you’re rolling around on the sidewalk, as if smiling while you walked wasn’t enough to make you look crazy.

And then of course he’s over for dinner, his phone going off with little siren noises, asking why the hell you ordered from that one place, don’t you know what they do to their workers? Oh, and throw in some guac, if I don’t get some avocado in me I will literally kill someone. Literally.

So that’s my take on the city. A neighbor, a friend, perhaps something more even as we move out of our Honeymoon phase. He teaches you how dumb you were, but how brilliant, too, and you learn to see yourself by his glittering lights. You’ll leave him, as friends always must, but he’ll be there, making conversation in the back of your mind as you walk your childhood streets. God, he’ll say, where is the good Italian? It’s 68 fucking degrees, why is she bundled up like that? These fucking peasants. But what is this weather though, heaven? Why the fuck would you leave somewhere this pretty, especially when someone else is paying the rent?

He’s a good friend to have, the city. He’ll make you leave your house, if only to get away from the sound of him rattling the windows. And shitty neighbor or not, he’ll be a tough one to leave behind, even if it is only for a little while.

Looking for some lit humor this summer? Try out one of these literary spoofs as you work on your novel.

1. Hark, a vagrant.

While Kate Beaton doesn’t write exclusively literary comics, her Hark a Vagrant features everything from Pride and Prejudice fanfic to feminist commentary on mainstream portrayals of “strong female characters.” Strange, it reminds me of a recent Marvel movie…

2. Guy in Your MFA

For those of you in an MFA or any sort of grad school, this one will probably be a little too real. I particularly liked the recent interaction with ManicPixieDream Girl and his recent commentary on the semi-colon.

3. The Worst Muse

Besides having a scarily relevant pinned post considering other recent commentaries on men pursuing underage women, The Worst Muse has basically everything in it you would have to say to send your editor off the dark side. My personal favorite is the one that says to replace adjectives with emojis. I wonder what the adverb equivalent would be?

Also. Throes.

4. Fake Nanowrimo Tips

Alright, so this one is a little off-season, but it’s useful to any writer working on their novel or thinking about working on one. Kudos for the Twilight burn and for what I can only assume is an excellent if unintentional reference to the little known 90’s cartoon, Gargoyles.

That’s all, folks. Comment below to let me know if you liked these spoofs and if I should add anything to my own summer reading list.

Well Lovelies, it’s 2AM and as hot as Satan’s armpit in my little top story dorm room, so rather than me getting some much needed beauty sleep, you all will get a just as needed end-of-the-year round-up, hyphens, cheese, (and most likely, late night typos) on the house. I’ll edit with a more critical eye pending sunrise and a good cup of Earl’s Garden.

This year could, easily, have been the best year of my life — so far, of course. I still hope to live by the exponential happiness growth model, with highs at the ripe old age of 104. But as for what made it so good, that can be summed up by two, or maybe four things.

The first ingredient to my happiness, is, as it always seems to be, the right people. I befriended Giselle Boustani, one of the most mature, brave, intellectual, compassionate, and wise people I know. When I imagine living in a house one day, if I ever get my act together to do so, I think I will have to have a room for Giselle, so that even when we’re not in the same dorm anymore I’ll hear her cackling down the hallway. It would be harder to live without her than to convince her, I think.

Then there’s Danial, the goofball on the first floor whose hair may even rival mine. I don’t want to wax too sweet on this one, as I enjoy giving the man a rough time, but I think missing him will be its own particular unpleasantness, like hunger when you’re on a diet or no wifi when you’re visiting relatives. You shouldn’t wish they were there, but you can’t help it, so you make up for it by liking all their Facebook posts? You know what I mean. I love the first floor boys, and I’ll go over all of them at length elsewhere, but damn it if I won’t miss Danial like an ache in my side.

There’s Violet and Zoe, who have singlehandedly taken over my holiday calendar for this year and the next one. Of all my friends who asked why I was leaving them for London, these two actually took it seriously when I told them to shut up and come with me. I look forward to exploring Europe with you two, and the South End in the meantime.

There’s Rebecca, quite possibly the best roommate I’ll ever have. We’re completely different religions and across the board on politics, and we’ve managed to talk about both in length without fighting. Our “Post-Its” and papers are still on the wardrobe where we left them — a baby picture of me, a list of places to go, and two notes that say “I’ll meet you at the ZipCar” (in case of zombie attack, obviously) and a joke about our codependence. Well, it’s mostly a joke.

There’s Kamara, with her terrifying stories of Nigeria and her deadpan until you realize she wasn’t actually joking. She’s kept me going the last few nights with Archer and deliveries of Thai food I should probably pay her for sooner or later. There’s Kyle, who may have the closest nerdtaste to mine I have ever met, and who has the kind of piercing glacial blue eyes you usually only hear about in bad fanfic. My teachers, my tutors, my mentors, my family. I love you all, and I am so lucky to have you. Leaving you will be a quiet heartache, like a growing pain.

Of course the second thing is my writing. I feel as though I’ve barely written, though I’ve had a piece workshopped every week of this semester — there just hasn’t been time, and the more I do write the more ideas I have. I’ve upped my game in academic writing and learned much more about the theory behind poetry, but most importantly I’ve realized that this, more than anything else, makes me who I am. I don’t know if that means I have to publish or pursue it in a career, but I know that if someone made me choose between dying and never writing again, I would only be confused, wondering why they would threaten me with the same thing twice. I have learned that it is incredibly exciting to be around people who feel the same way. The brief interviews I have done with writers this year have felt oddly like validations of my existence — a dangerous reaction, but a promising one, too. It’s strange, how the less time I have, the more I write, and better. I have to remember that even as I dedicate myself to my craft by way of my English major, writing started as an escape and consolation for me. I learned to write out of fear, and I have no interest in being afraid anymore. I can’t say I won’t be writing for me, but I’ll be writing for something else, too — and maybe on top of poems and short stories, I can write articles, too, on feminism and food and college and starting a garden. So much of college and the city is about choosing, whittling down the jungle into a path misleading in its narrowness. The only necessary limit in writing is the word count, and even that is moot for self-publishers.

The third ingredient to happiness, oddly enough, is food. I have all but abandoned the dining halls this year, and while my waistline has suffered for it, I have no regrets. I have brought home squid ink paella, tikka masala, scallion pancakes, and eggs benedict just as readily as I have boiled pasta and reheated dinosaur chicken nuggets in my microwave. I have tried dozens of teas and more types of chocolate. Give me a good budget and a decent kitchen, and I’ll take the world one cuisine at a time.

Last but not least, the biggest thing that has changed this year to make me happy has been me. I’d written a good part of this post, at least in the first draft, under the title of “The Art of Losing,” a phrase from the poem “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop. I’d planned something sentimental and nostalgic, and while this certainly fits those categories, I hope it adds something, too. Losing wouldn’t hurt or matter at all if we hadn’t been changed by the gaining — if what we wanted, or what we were, hadn’t changed. I’m different than I was when I first came to college, though by no means finished changing. Where I hesitated, now I speak; where I worried, now I sleep; where I itched in my own skin, now I dance, and damn it if I don’t get better all the time. It’s exhausting to change, but it’s a headrush, too, the same kind of powertrip you got when you were little and spun so fast you fell down and could only see the sky, gaping like you could fall up into it. Becoming is like forgetting yourself in a dream, except when you remember there’s a little more, a little bit of magic, that may be quieted but cannot be erased, with or without your permission. You can never go back to the imprecise innocence you began with, but you begin to know where you are, your moods and preferences, what can save a day or a friendship. I trust my anger more than I did before, and my love. I trust the wasted days because they teach me what I think waste is, and how to avoid it. The days I spent working on papers feel the most like wasted days, but not the days I spent editing them; poetry, midnight conversations with friends, and good desserts, those were the things I lived for, and waited for without knowing I waited for them. No time enjoyed is ever wasted, and the time we do waste tells us what will matter, now and later. I have spent so long trying to figure out what makes people call me “quirky” or “odd,” wondering which of the thousands of standpoints they are comparing me from and why they would bother to label me with something so ambiguous, with such seeming good intentions. It’s easy, especially for women, to mistake what you want to be with what you will be seen as. People can think I’m absolutely nutty, if they like, and the only person who could make me miserable would be me, as it always has been. Going absolutely nutty would be quite nice, I think — at least then I’d be getting weird looks rather than vague, off-color comments intended as compliments. Ambiguity belongs in art, not between people, and even less between people who aren’t related to each other.

This year has been a series of snapshots. My professor, a British knight, stops me on the street to tell me I’m formidable, and ask what I’m doing with my life, and is only taken aback when I mention I’m considering psychology; leftovers the size of two people’s dinners in Texas, wearing Carlynn’s recently gifted pajamas and fiddling with her Otome game on her phone; my tentative fores into the dating world, as I drink red wine while watching Being Human, awkwardly trying to cuddle on a bed as hard as a rock and much too small; hours spent in the Core Writing Office, with Lauren asking me what precisely I did wrong in that sentence while I sip egg drop soup out of a compostable spoon and try to remember not to pronounce Nietsche “NEE-chee;” eating Trader Joes on Giselle’s floor, or having her read my fortune with her Angel Cards; the nights I spent talking with Rebecca about God, or family, or Baltimore; ruthlessly mocking Danial’s carpet as we stay up late in his room and he talks about how he can always finish his essay at 4AM because it’s the world goddamn tournament for Cricket and he’s ready to see Pakistan or New Zealand or Australia take down the colonial oppressors (satire or reality? who knows?); sitting on the stairs to listen to Will play guitar for a little while before trekking up; or trying to get Shisha with friends half a dozen times, always being told the wait was two hours, and going home exhausted only to talk for another three. These moments are precious, not always sweet but sometimes salty with late-night sweat under a heavy winter jacket, a year to be remembered for its flavor when the images that made it up begin to fade. I will miss it, but it is hard to miss something you carry with you, though I do it often, like a cake that remembers its mould yet continues to bake.

But you know enough is enough when all you can talk about it food. It’s 3AM here, the time of night when you realize you need to either eat or fall back asleep, and I am much too tired to make myself breakfast. Goodnight, my dears, and do try to take care of yourselves. But wait — I’d almost forgotten the other thing that makes all these endings worthwhile. Sure, I’m going away, from Boston and California and everything else, but when I get back, I not only get to see how I’ve changed, I get to watch my friends become, too, and wonder how they will while I’m away.