Collin College: DigitalCommons@Collin

Archival Pigment Print - 2025 17”x24” Instructor Nathanel Rehlander:  Photo Digital Imaging IIhttps://digitalcommons.collin.edu/studentinvitational2025/1006/thumbnail.jp

Perez, Ayden

Crow through Moonlight

Ink on Paper - 2025 11”x14” Instructor Jennifer Seibert: 2D Designhttps://digitalcommons.collin.edu/studentinvitational2025/1058/thumbnail.jp

Ortiz, Jose

Urban Outline

Koosha, Honey

 
A Spatial Description of My Childhood Home in Tehran 
 In Tehran, a city that still occupies my thoughts even after I emigrated three years ago, 
there is a place I cannot spend a day without thinking about. My house, located in a corner of this 
bustling city, holds my heart, quickens my breath , and evokes memories. That house was where I 
lived my entire childhood, and my memories of wandering its two small alleys remain vividly 
imprinted in my mind. 
 Our house had a beautiful courtyard, every corner of which held an important memory. In 
one corner, my mother had built a lovely gazebo. The gazebo was not very large but not small 
either - it could fit three single sofas, my mother's canvases, and a small table. The leaves of the 
hydrangea and jasmine climbed the walls and covered the timbers and fences that formed the 
main structure of the gazebo, and the scent of jasmine intoxicated me. I often looked for her in 
the mornings, and when I couldn’t find her inside, the smell of oil paint and thinner led me to the 
yard. There I discovered her, immersed in her painting. I would rush over to her, kiss her, greet 
her with a cheerful “Good morning,” and marvel at her work.  
 Across the yard, she had laid the trunks of an old pine tree, which had collapsed under the 
weight of the winter snow, lying like a fallen giant in our yard. She converted them into benches. 
And next to them, we would spread out a rug and enjoy black tea and afternoon coffee and 
Napoleon pastries or cream pastries that brought back the taste of my childhood in me. Our 
laughter soared like birds flying in the sky, and we chatted in an atmosphere full of love and joy.
 The yard had a large terrace where we put a bed. This terrace would become our refuge at 
night, when we preferred not to step on the grass but would spend our time there, roasting kebabs 
or chickens over a fire. The smell of burning meat would waft through the cool air, filling the 
 
space with warmth and joy. We would enter the house from the yard, entering the hall where the 
pleasures of my world were: the books in my mother's library . 
 There was a small hall where we had placed a library and a sofa where anyone could sit 
and leaf through the books comfortably. The feeling I got from touching the paper of books still 
makes me want to hold a physical book instead of a digital one. I grew up with these books, from 
Hafez and Rumi to Sartre and Kafka, from Forough and Shamlu to Gorky and Shakespeare. I 
lived in these pages, experienced love and separation with Catherine in the Wuthering Heights, 
felt hardship and poverty, judged and reconsidered decisions with the Brothers Karamazov, and 
learned spirituality and Sufism from Rumi's Ghazals, whose verses I softly whispered to myself:   
 یک سینه سخن دارم، هین شرح دهم یا نه؟«      من بی دل و دستارم در خانه خمارم» 
“I left my belongings and entered this tavern 
I only have a chest full of words, but can’t utter a single one.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This photo was taken when I was organizing one of the libraries 
  
 
Works Cited: 
Ghazal 2309 Translated by Nader Khalili Rumi, Fountain of Fire Cal-Earth, September 1994 
Ghazal 2309, Persian, https://ganjoor.net/moulavi/shams/ghazalsh/sh2309 


A Spatial Description of my Childhood Home in Tehran

Sloan, Brooke

Forces 
Volume 2025 Article 24 
5-16-2025 
I Love When it Rains 
Brooke Sloan 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.collin.edu/forces 
Recommended Citation 
Sloan, Brooke (2025) "I Love When it Rains," Forces: Vol. 2025, Article 24. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.collin.edu/forces/vol2025/iss1/24 
This Poem is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Collin. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Forces by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Collin. For more information, please contact 
mtomlin@collin.edu. 
5 9
F O R C E S    I    2 O 2 5
Harbor Sand   I   
Heather L. King I Love It When It Rains 
Brooke Sloan
The droplets telling me to come out 
Come stand in the rain.
Feel them prickle your hair 
Dampen your worn skin 
Slide down your body 
Tickle your lashes
Splatter your tongue.
Feel the thunder roar in your stomach 
The lightning crack in your bones.
Feel the droplets embrace all of you 
Embrace the wet symphony.
Come stand in the rain, 
It’s childish
But I love it when it rains.
Such little things coming together. 
Is it angry?
Is it heartbroken?
Perhaps this is joy.
Are you destroying?
Perhaps you’re bringing life? 
Maybe it’s none
Maybe it’s all.
But it always embraces 
All who stand beneath. 
God, I love it when it rains.


I Love When it Rains

Mardele, Susan

Forces 
Volume 2025 Article 25 
5-16-2025 
If These Roads Could Speak 
Susan Mardele 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.collin.edu/forces 
Recommended Citation 
Mardele, Susan (2025) "If These Roads Could Speak," Forces: Vol. 2025, Article 25. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.collin.edu/forces/vol2025/iss1/25 
This Poem is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Collin. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Forces by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Collin. For more information, please contact 
mtomlin@collin.edu. 
8
If These Roads Could Speak
Susan Mardele
If these roads could speak,
they would moan for the desperation 
and wince at the pain I shed as I walk.
Out where the asphalt turns to dirt, 
I stumble along, and the howls tear 
from my bruised heart.
The sun and wind 
bleach and scrape
the conjured beast of pain,
Subduing it, soothing it, 
holding it in kind, airy hands,
leaching out the anger and hurt.
Walking alone
with a buffer of space and time, 
what a privilege, a freedom
To yowl and grieve without restraint,
without dulling the excruciating edge of hurt, 
no one to frighten with intensity
or think me crazy.
And finally, to realize that 
the raw emotion roaring out,
clears a space where this tiny, warm creature 
can curl up, safe in the knowledge
That crashing waves of despair, 
hot wrath,
hollow howls of abandonment,
Once unleashed,
can never be quite the fearsome 
monsters they once were.
Safe in this golden space,
this small, innocent soul can
slowly, languidly and unstoppably
begin to stretch its wings,
unfurling and gathering strength 
until they are strong enough to fly.
these roads


If These Roads Could Speak

Nayak, Neeta

Forces 
Volume 2025 Article 30 
5-16-2025 
Mind, Body and Heat! 
Neeta Nayak 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.collin.edu/forces 
Recommended Citation 
Nayak, Neeta (2025) "Mind, Body and Heat!," Forces: Vol. 2025, Article 30. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.collin.edu/forces/vol2025/iss1/30 
This Poem is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Collin. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Forces by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Collin. For more information, please contact 
mtomlin@collin.edu. 
2 1
F O R C E S    I    2 O 2 5
Mind, Body and Heat!
Neeta Nayak
A smoldering ember
Right in the junction of my sternum and abdomen 
Lights up like flashes
Sometimes accompanied by audiovisual effects 
Screeching like the sirens
Of an ambulance, trying to make its way 
Thru rush hour traffic
The sirens building in crescendo 
Pushing aside every vehicle in sight.
This ember exudes power
It controls me … Every organ 
Exposed to this sizzling fury.
Is this the hell fire that I was warned about
When I was just a little kid who refused to obey 
every rule set by an adult?
Everything is going downhill … Or … is it? 
My brain still works
Those moods swing back and forth 
Like a swing torn in a hurricane
Landing on a spot of humor … I can still tease myself 
Even when sitting in a bubbling hot tub full of sweat.
Am I experiencing the glorious Texas summer?
The exciting triple digits that famously can cook 
an egg on a sidewalk? 
Oh no! These are just exciting hot flashes
That bubble like the molten lava from a volcano. 
Oh no!
Menopause
The pause my patients warned me about
 
The pause that men rarely have pleasure of experiencing. 
The pause I wish to fast forward,
The pause that’s taught me patience
The pause that’s made me more empathic with my patients
The pause in middle life that makes a woman realize 
that hot flashes and Texas summers 
Are long lasting, but temporary!
Even this heat shall pass!
mind
heat
body
I feel like the ember inside 
Makes me perspire, so profusely
That I’m in a bowl of scalding soup
That is bubbling … Like a witches cauldron 
But turns into an ice bath
In the next 30 seconds.
Fever and chills, dryness in one place 
Overflowing moisture in another 
Melting bones getting softer
Arteries and veins getting harder
Could it all be happening in the same body; 
How’s this dichotomy even possible?


Mind, Body and Heat!

Ketavarapu, Harsha

Forces 
Volume 2025 Article 32 
5-16-2025 
Mother 
Harsha Ketavarapu 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.collin.edu/forces 
Recommended Citation 
Ketavarapu, Harsha (2025) "Mother," Forces: Vol. 2025, Article 32. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.collin.edu/forces/vol2025/iss1/32 
This Photograph is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Collin. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Forces by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Collin. For more information, please contact 
mtomlin@collin.edu. 
2 8
Mother   I   Harsha Ketavarapu
2 9
F O R C E S    I    2 O 2 5
Momma’s Heart
Lori Hawk Fyfe
How to mend a broken heart?
An age old question usually answered with 
Age old time.
But this is a momma’s heart.
A momma heart breaks in a different way.
It can’t get angry like towards a cheating spouse.
You can divorce those and carry the anger like a badge 
Of honor.
You can throw the pictures into the fire pit
And laugh over a glass or two of wine with girlfriends. 
You move on.
But a momma heart is a different kind of heart and 
A different kind of hurt.
It’s a heart full of memories of the day you were born and the 
Love that overcame me was one I never imagined.
It’s memories of a toddler and sticky chubby fingers 
Turning my face for a kiss.
It’s a boy off to school and assuring me, “It will be ok. 
I’ll see you at 3, Momma.”
It’s a boy graduating from high school and 
Making it through college and the military. 
Independent and strong, a grown man.
But it’s the hurt that tarnishes the memories 
Because you always had to push back and push 
Me away.
I get the fight for independence. 
I was my father’s child.
But the dismissal of my love and support
As you moved into a union called marriage, 
Has broken this momma’s heart.
heart


Mother

Free, Catherine E.

Forces 
Volume 2025 Article 34 
5-16-2025 
My Freedom Lost to a Cigarette 
Catherine E. Free 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.collin.edu/forces 
Recommended Citation 
Free, Catherine E. (2025) "My Freedom Lost to a Cigarette," Forces: Vol. 2025, Article 34. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.collin.edu/forces/vol2025/iss1/34 
This Photograph is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Collin. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Forces by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Collin. For more information, please contact 
mtomlin@collin.edu. 
6 0
To Deconstruct and Heal
Caitlin H. Denney
I have aged with every harsh touch. 
I have been defiled down
To the softest flesh of my guts
To every petite bone in my fingers
By every piece of grime that has dug into my body,
Buried into my bones and drifted through my bloodstream.
I will slide off my wrinkled sun-spotted skin
Like dropping a sopping towel from my shoulders after a bath. 
With my silken cloth I will wipe
And scrub, and scratch, and wipe,
Until the pink rawness of a newborn’s complexion 
Reappears from beneath this defaced shell.
With an slow and calm stretch
Like unfolding the wings of an angel,
I will reach my arms above my head and down between my shoulders 
Before I gently glide my spine free from my ribs.
I will run floss between the chasms of my vertebrae 
And dip curved fingers in to catch the stubborn pieces,
Purging every nerve of the muck and the memories packed between 
Until every wandering hand and rough grab is forgotten.
My hands will travel up
With a touch that explores this innocent body 
New and tender.
Until my palms caress my cheeks and creep up into my hair. 
With fingers slotted together like a basket
I will lift my brain from its dark cradle and 
Dunk it into my bucket of cool clear water.
And I will squeeze
It gives under my hands like a sponge from the sea 
Exhaling red and black clouds
Breathing back in clear crisp life
Until I am satisfied that everything is gone and 
All that remains is the love I was born with.
My Freedom Lost to a Cigarette   I   
Catherine E. Free
Rosemeade
Cade Soergel
Under ladders, I keep walking and
Spilling salt every where I can
I’ll hold on, restart, pause again.
  
A routine that never ends.
A twin bed, like an island
An island on a sea of trash
A sea of trash and leftover ash
2022 September 15
Ended my nightmare on Rosemeade


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Crow through Moonlight

Urban Outline

A Spatial Description of my Childhood Home in Tehran

I Love When it Rains

If These Roads Could Speak

Mind, Body and Heat!

Mother

My Freedom Lost to a Cigarette

Spark

To Deconstruct and Heal

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