< Table of Contents Welcome to the Family by Amrita Ketireddy to my mother, who never cried in room 207 After Ocean Vuong By Aarushi Gupta “i dread the red of your eyes like a / twenty-nine-year-old dreads his birthday.” under a painting of indra (1) scorned, you make your mandir (2) in the familiar dip of the mattress. soon, the view will be replaced by the smiling portrait of your mother, who lays in bed behind. the mattress will turn white, for the only south indian snowstorm is the whirl of dupattas (3) at funerals, icicles melting under the weight of unshed tears. i dread the red of your eyes like a a twenty-nine-year-old dreads his birthday. not black remembering, but the pink of your unpolished nail forgetting itself, pressing crescents into my arm. red, commutative as death itself. if time is a mother, why does it freeze in hospital rooms, where the umbilical cord is forged again and again? locked in this furnace, withstanding the heat of being ganesha (4) for once, you think of the last time you prayed to god in this room. go on, mother, pick up the phone and call. morph into parvati, remember the time they churned my stomach, a samudra manthana (5) . painkiller amrut, splattered on the floor outside our house. floating in that puddle, i saw an eyelash, its shortness a gift you gave freely. yours or mine? perhaps, neither. it belonged to nani (6) first, but so did you. i wish i was there with you, wish i could feel the cosmic pulling of draupadi’s saree (7) pause. i wish i could tear a hole in it, sew an extra yard of cotton into the dupatta of time. but if there’s one thing i learnt the day you first walked into room 207, it’s that no one can hide from a mother’s wrath. (1) indra is the hindu god of rain, storms, thunder and lightning. (2) mandir is hindi for temple. (3) dupatta is an indian garment, similar to a shawl. (4) ganesha is the son of goddess parvati in hindu mythology. (5) samudra manthana refers to a myth wherein the gods churned the ocean to obtain the holy nectar called amrut. (6) nani is hindi for grandmother. (7) draupadi’s saree refers to a tale from the mahabharata wherein there was an attempt to humiliate draupadi by pulling off her saree. however, lord krishna intervened, making the saree infinitely long and preserving draupadi’s dignity. About the Writer... Aarushi Gupta (she/her) is a high school senior from Bangalore, India. You can find more of her work at www.aarushiwrites.com . About the Artist... Amrita Ketireddy is a junior at Creekside High School. She has done fine arts for nearly ten years alongside tennis. She is a member of numerous honor societies and clubs, though is an officer of her school's Creative Writing Club, Film Production Club, and FBLA. In the future, she hopes to study Software Engineering along with Fine Arts and follow her passion for creating things from the ground up.

< Table of Contents Gilded Embrace by Isabella Woods Wax-Feathered Heart By Izzy Falgas In a prison trapped by way of sea and land, watching as your fingers run through soft wax, I’ve seen gentle smiles and calloused hands; father deftly lining quills up from the smallest. They took him forty-two days to construct which left me forty-three to gaze down at you. “I reached out to you, to cup your honey in my hands. / All I could grasp was dripping wax.” You soared, wings brushing my sky as I perch on my own chariot of ignorance. I reached out to you, to cup your honey in my hands. All I could grasp was dripping wax. Your eyes were on the sky, counting the stars of Orion— why did they never lock onto me? Too far to hold you, near enough to hurt you; is arm's length still too close? Cupped in my hands is your ambrosia I never had. You were never vain; I was the selfish one. Washed up on the white sands of Icaria, death held close as the sun fell in love with a dead man. About the Writer... Izzy Falgas is a freshman in Harrison School for the Arts and is in the Creative Writing department. She enjoys writing poetry and flash fiction in her free time, as well as creating other forms of visual art. She has won many awards and accolades for her visual art, including FAEA’s Award of Distinction and a gold ribbon in SSYRA’s visual category. She has a novel in the works, but is mainly occupied by piles of homework and playing with her four-month-old puppy. About the Artist... Isabella Woods is a junior at Savannah Arts Academy. She knew at a young age that she was interested in doing art. Some of her influences have come from her grandmother, mom, and teachers who have all inspired her with their own art. Now attending Savannah Arts Academy, she is able to be creative everyday with multiple different kinds of art.

< Table of Contents Avarice Grin by Max Watt About the Artist... Max is a high school senior at Savannah Arts Academy planning on attending Georgia Southern University. He enjoys working with a variety of mediums but specializes in acrylic paint and chalk pastels.

Jay Lechwar Jay Lechwar is a Senior studying Creative Writing at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. They are the current Junior Layout and Design Editor of Élan Literary Magazine as well as the Manager of Hours of their school’s Literary Arts Honors Society. Presently, they are focused on finding more opportunities to interact with their local community through their art.

< Back Crushing Pain by Shawn Ivonet The Second Law of Thermodynamics By Elizabeth Lindsey A degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system, like bombs that barely work or lessons from my father. Creating while it destroys, cat-like and breathing, it feels every corner of infinity and pushes it forward, folding gaps into families and the lives of high school girls that feel d- isordered and lazy where something else should be. You taught me your dreams, just in case I would turn out just like you, like father, like daughter, just kidding and unseriousness weighing on your shoulders now where the lack of gravity should have been, an astronaut being able to bear casualties—or maybe actually an astrophysicist, except now you tell me not to dream away my life. Questions you held, on space & time, if piercing the line between praise and permanency is enough or because amazing things happen when they're irreversible, will we survive? These questions, once charred into molars, now have their very own place everywhere. Life gets stretched out, the distance betweeneverything increases, like the distance between stars and even me & you. Growing up, I thought you were too complex to understand, but according to the second law of thermodynamics, simplicity and disorder can be very synonymous— we just keep expelling chaos because we need to live, praying on X’s & O’s and things that take us back for a while, like David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust playing from your car radio, living simply in between dazed lyrics. "Even though this law is as cynical as it is, that which could be our end is our growth, entropy consumes, / nests chaos and entanglement inside imperfect things, allowing life to weasel out of impossibility." Even though this law is as cynical as it is, that which could be our end is our growth, entropy consumes, nests chaos and entanglement inside imperfect things, allowing life to weasel out of impossibility. Things just wind down at right or wrong times, it doesn’t matter and everything matters have overlapped then grown apart— only we were never able to get our hands on something as unworldly as patience, but we’ve got the time to wait around because you told me, thanks to science, things can never decrease.In an isolated system,There’sonlyspace for more space. About the Artist... Shawn Ivonnet is an 11th grade Visual Artist student at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. They most often paint portraits and use acrylic paint.

2 < Back Elegy for Big Talbot State Park Brendan Nurczyk Capture Memory by Kaleigh Simmons Elegy for Big Talbot State Park by Brendan Nurczyk "I’ll write on the stark singular// page at midnight, bright and limited// as a coast, I was here" We’ll get there in time to watch the heron empty its beak of fish into the Nassau Sound, flurry of silver bodies etching blue knives, these wasted afternoons becoming lessons in learning to love every part of the branch the Spanish moss snags, our soft dislodging of eyes and the stubbornness of sand, and brine, the way the hot air cuts into the cold. Waist deep in the water and dancing hard on my sprained ankle, I’ll point at a white abandoned shirt hanging from a branch on the shoreline, dark yellowed-in armpits, a calcified once-body, and remark, It could be anyone’s, even ours. And you’ll nod silently as the water swells now at our shoulders and moves us farther and our skin now more salt than human. And when we’re back on the shore we’ll write our secrets in the sand and then quickly bury then. Let them die in the mouth, let us swim for hours, idiot fish. And I’ll think of this place, bruised into a childhood I measure by hurricane seasons, by the perspiration that builds on the windows of the house. The messages I scrawl into the glass that warp and evaporate, and there’s no proof I was ever here besides this single moment eaten apart by mosquitos and low sun like the oranges we emptied of any flesh with our sticky hesitant mouths. I’ll tell you on the other side of the shore, between here and Amelia Island, in the pruned topography of my hands. I’ll write to you on the gullies of eroded dunes, on every inch of available skin on the body I bury under layers of clothes and inside summers I waste with nothing but the pumping of my lungs to the rhythm of the wind adrift cycads. I’ll write on the stark singular page at midnight, bright and limited as a coast, I was here, you don’t have to believe me, but I was. About the Writer... Brendan Nurczyk is a poet and essayist from Jacksonville, FL. He is an alum of the Iowa Young Writers Workshop and reads for the Farside Review. About the Artist... Kaleigh Simmons is a student at Savannah Arts Academy. The mediums of their piece are Alcohol Marker and Color Pencils.

Hurt Mother by Colson Gomez A Lesson on Teenage Girlhood by Oona Keleher I tried shaving for the first time, hidden in my bathroom—the razor blade came up bloody. No longer sunflower best friend, I lay in piles of weeds that look like daisies—nine years old and still growing, hunched over the toilet in pain, staring at clumps of blood in the basin underneath bare bottom. Little free thing—genderless and naïve—hit with a shovel, buried alive and still learning. It’s August. There’s a mosquito trying to get in. The buzz against the window brews a headache in my brain. I can feel the blood drip out of me. Let me tell you a secret—we are all just trying to be a woman. To plug our wounds with tampons and pads and more bleeding technology developed by a man. To fit in with everyone else. I wish people told you about growing up before it happened. About the Writer... Oona Keleher is a young artist and poet from Florida. Currently, they work as the Senior Marketing & Social Media Editor for Élan International Literary Magazine. When they’re not off writing somewhere, you can find them writing their own comics. About the Artist... Colson Gomez is a visual arts student with a focus in drawing and painting. She's interested in experimenting with different mediums and exploring unorthodox art forms, currently making art focusing on natural materials and subject matter concerning the natural world. Besides nature, she is passionate about art history and anthropology, and she feels like that influences a lot of her own artistic ideas.

Lila Hartley Lila Hartley is a Creative Writing junior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. In her freshman year, Lila fell in love with performing literary works. She has participated in several open mics and in Douglas Anderson’s annual show, Extravaganza, in her freshman and sophomore years. She has had her fiction and creative nonfiction published in Èlan Literary Magazine, and a poem published in the Poetry Out Loud Gets Original Anthology. This year, Lila is the President of Literary Arts Honors Society at Douglas Anderson and Junior Director of Community Engagement for Èlan Literary Magazine.

Just a Little Laundry by Ruby Wirth About the Artist... Ruby Wirth is a student at Douglas Anderson. She is pursuing a dual major in sculpture and painting. In her work, she aims to connect with viewers by expressing herself and creating immersive worlds to explore. Her ideal mediums are found objects, paint, and clay.

Bright Adventures Ahead by Abigail Cashwell New Orleans Nights by Zoë Forstall the sun kisses the sky just before it slips under the horizon it tucks behind lake pontchartrain’s expanse and leaves a blank space to welcome the evening i lay quietly, reminiscing on the park’s bench the night’s ecosystem becomes a celestial dance once more the buttered dandelions we once wound into flower crowns sway alone between grassy hills with the windchimes the cicadas hum their unforgiving gospel into the pollen soaked air where fleshy clouds join the sky i sit accompanied by the moon and stars being our own constellation through depths of boundless darkness About the Writer... Zoë Forstall is a senior at The Willow School and an accomplished student leader and entrepreneur. As the founder of both the Confidence Club and Content Creator Club, she empowers peers in self-expression and skill development. Serving as head of the Spirit Points Committee in student government, she promotes school spirit and unity. As an International Youth Neuroscience Association member, a certificate in Neuroscience I, and recognition by the U.S. Naval Research Academy for her first place science fair project, Zoë plans to pursue neuroscience on a pre-med track in college. Beyond academics, she enjoys helping others, listening to jazz music, practicing self-care, writing poetry, and exploring new hobbies. About the Artist... Abigail is a high School senior at Savannah Arts Academy. She has been published in É lan Literary Magazine's Spring/Summer 2024 print issue. She enjoys all mediums but enjoys acrylic paint the most. She loves traveling, so most of her paintings come from places she has traveled to. After high school, she plans to go to college to be an elementary art teacher.

< Table of Contents Broken Limbs by Abigail Cashwell I confess to the sea By Jacob Jing that I am exhausted. that I know there is no sky where a lover can fly without the destiny of descent, but I still find myself there, waiting to be hurled back down. in his fiery descent, Icarus was comforted by a tender wind, and returned to the water from the womb of his undoing. if the tragedy is that he recognized the fall too late, then where is the gentle nosedive for the one who predicted plummet from the start? where are the soft waves that will cradle that loveless execution? what I want is to be told that I am enough, that I have been good, that my descent will be more soft than lethal. if not that, then I want to be mourned with more softness than I was loved. to be told that my body once carried something kind inside it. I still need to forgive myself for burning in the name of safety you failed to offer. the scorched plumage: a casualty of my useless heart. before you tell me to swallow my tears, let me first become fluent in the shame “let me first feed these feathers to / the flame.” of wanting to be held. let me first feed these feathers to the flame. let me love the wounds you gave me before I take to the sky once more, chasing what the sun leaves behind. About the Writer... Jacob Jing is a young writer currently studying visual arts at the University of North Texas. He has been published in Spellbinder Magazine and is forthcoming in Eucalyptus Lit. In his free time, he enjoys photography, naps, and the $3 milkshakes from the student union. Find more of his work at https://linktr.ee/Jacob_Jing . About the Author... Abigail is an 11th grade student at Savannah Arts Academy. She enjoys using acrylic paint and experimenting with color. She also likes making art pieces using references from places she has traveled to. After high school she plans to go to college to become an art teacher at an elementary school.

< Back The Forgotten Art Form: Joy! by Moss Edwards Little Things By Eva Rami It goes like this: the little things will start to matter more. Once, we satiated our longings by professing them exuberantly, singing, kissing. Now, we move the stars in silence—sitting long hours in quiet company on a balcony and swatting mosquitoes away from one another’s arms, because the words will always elude us, but killing insects is innate. We muddy the hems of our jeans—meandering home after a day’s rain, when the runoff has puddled and drenched the concave asphalt—because folding up the cuffs of our jeans means surrendering to some unspoken direction, and we would rather suffer another load of laundry than risk being called a do-gooder. Someone will smile at us, a second too long, and we will construct careful narratives of a future. We live our adolescence like this: arms open, eyes pleading, for someone to brave with us this gnarled land. Perhaps this is how we live our whole lives. We wonder: were we sculpted by God’s hand only for our hearts to spend the rest of time seeking again such a divine touch? Let us sit here. Hold me now. Then, I may know what It is to be seen. About the Author... Eva Rami is a current junior at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas, where she studies creative writing. Eva’s work has received recognition from the Scholastic Arts & Writing Competition and the New York Times student contests. Recently, she was named a Texas Young Master of Creative Writing by the Texas Cultural Trust and the Texas Commission on the Arts. About the Artist... Moss Edwards is a 12th grade visual artist at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. Their work includes scenes from their own life, incorporating exaggerated colors, lighting, and elements to create a new world. They enjoy experimenting with mediums including cardboard, oil pastels, and colored pencils to create more texture.