Water and Love,
  Rain and a
  Broken Bridge
  Forrest Ambruster '10

Untitled
  Gia Harris '08

The Good Fight
  Maxfield Peterson '10

Water and Love, Rain and a Broken Bridge
     by Forrest Ambruster '10

     While walking by the railing of the Great Bridge in the middle of a fearsome rainstorm, I thought I heard a nearby voice calling out my name.  I didn't let on that I had heard, because it was impossible to see more than three feet in any direction and I had believed I was alone.  But then I thought I recognized the sound of your voice, and it seemed sweet but full and satisfying as the fattest raindrops at the beginning of the rainy season, before the flowers start to wilt and people remember to shuffle about beneath umbrellas.  So I ran forward and towards this voice, because suddenly I had something incredibly important to whisper in your ears for every raindrop that has ever touched your skin.  I wanted to tell you how it felt to fall so far and be blessed by the existence of someone else so perfect.
        It was only just last week -- do you remember that report, on CBS and FOX and all the major networks?  Yes, a section of the bridge fell in, a great twisting hunk of metal, straining and leaping like a human arm whose hand is crushed beneath a cement weight.  If your voice had not called me, I probably would have been broken by the same terrifying force.  Instead as you can see, I managed to reach the bridge's homeward side in complete safety.  But the rain increased even as the wind fell away, and the water threatened to wash away my skin.  I felt close to crying, but the whole world was already crying for me.  My ears focused on the sound of a thousand newborn streams, wailing as they traveled down drainpipes and into the sewers to learn of a true river's work with their comrades.  I wanted to hear your voice again, but the world had stopped granting me favors.
      That is when I realized this: I would rather die than live without telling you the things a thousand raindrops have screamed before joyfully evaporating from your Selkie hair.  You are Heaven, and I must love you.  That is where I will begin.
 

The Good Fight
  Maxfield Peterson '10

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     This morning there was spit in my bathroom sink.  It was flamingo pink and frothy, identical to my own toothpaste, but it wasn't mine.  No one was awake yet -- not Jessie, not Elliot.  The pink spit in my sink could not have been theirs.  But I wasn't worried, five years living with someone you grow used to lots of things not being yours.  The garden's weeds, the seedy hair in the shower drain, blinking phone messages, the leftovers forgotten on the table.  After a while, other people's residue doesn't seem so bad and you forget to attribute it to anyone.  I looked at the toothpaste and the cap was still on; it should have occurred to me then that it wasn't Elliot's.  Elliot always leaves things half-done, waiting, because I'll be there soon to finish the job.
      I ran the water and the froth, assaulted, disappeared down the drain.  The house was quiet this morning.  Chase was napping by the front door and the cricket trapped in our basement had hushed after a hectic night of crying.  None of this worried me: the silence, the spit, the capped toothpaste, until I looked into the bathroom mirror, my hair wrapped in a terrycloth bouffant not quite concealing a figure who quickly ducked out of sight.  Who's there? I whispered, my throat hardening.  Who's there?!  I grabbed my toothbrush in a clenched fist.  It didn't occur to me how strange it would be for an intruder to be using my toothpaste, especially since my toothbrush was dry and had not been borrowed.  It didn't occur to me that the alarm system was turned on, that Chase was not barking, that I couldn't hear any footsteps.  I considered calling for Elliot, but he had work in a few hours and I didn't want to wake him.  He gets little enough sleep as it is.  Besides he's so harsh in the mornings.
     Hello?  A man three inches shorter than me walked back into the bathroom, his hands up like stop signs, surrendering.  Hello.  Scared, frozen in the door frame, he spoke quickly...
 

Untitled
  Gia Harris '08

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     Isolated in a shimmering motorboat, water washing the hull like an upset stomach, we sat and waited.  We traded stories and bullshit in maroon-spaded playing cards and rocked the boat for fun until it scared the fish away.
     This is what Evan and I did while we were fishing.  I never caught anything and had given up on it long ago; I just wanted to return home talking about a good day fishing.
     We pulled hats over our faces trying to doze off and dream what real men dream.  We wrapped golden glistening strings around our big toes, waiting for applause from Huck Finn.  The sky curved over the dam at the lake's end.
     I forgot the knot, that rigid little beast I used last summer when I hooked my thumb and sucked up the blood.  Shifting around the wooden chipped benches we handed poles and casted out willfully, squinting for the ripples on the vanishing point.
     I remember it was the beginning of the end when the mosquitoes lacquered their lips with toxin and hummed over the water for no reason, because they had done it the night before.
     I made up my own knot and tossed it overboard, piercing the worm's saliva skin and sending it into the deep green blue abyss.  I clicked the reel, the line ending its frenetic shaking; the worm, I imagined, was now floating off the murky bottom.  I didn't want to cast out; I didn't want to chop the air in front of my face for bugs until eight o'clock when we had to return the boat.  I just wanted to talk about the good fight with my dad's friends over pan-fried trout and Coronas.
     So I plopped the worm down into water hell and wiped my face with sunblock just because it was cold and the vessel was starting to smell less sweet than it had when the day begun.
     The last cast of the hope-devoid fisher boy sunk to the bottom, and for whatever reason, the pole began to jiggle.....