ScholarWorks @ SeattleU (Seattle University)

Mahl, Sarah

Fragments 
Volume 62 Interlude Article 9 
2020 
Driftwood 
Sarah Mahl 
Seattle University 
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Recommended Citation 
Mahl, Sarah (2020) "Driftwood," Fragments: Vol. 62, Article 9. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/9 
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1 
 
Driftwood 
Sarah Mahl 
 
 
Olive reached the abandoned lifeguard tower, the sand cool under her feet. She held 
her shoes in one hand and began to climb the ladder. Graffiti covered the walls, and 
she stepped over a broken beer bottle at the top. She sat down towards the edge and 
tucked her knees into her chest. With the beach spread out in front of her and the 
waves crashing onto the sand, she wrapped her arms around herself and rested her 
chin on her knees. 
She hadn’t been able to sleep, and this was always where she went when she 
needed to calm down. The salty sea air and the sounds of the ocean helped. Her mom 
would kill her if she knew she was out here at this time of night—the homeless 
sometimes slept on the beach, and her mother was terrified of them—but the beach 
was deserted. 
She wasn’t sure why she wasn’t able to sleep. This happened sometimes, 
where she’d lay awake for hours, wait until she was tired, and hope that she would 
eventually fall asleep. If she was lucky, she might doze for a couple hours, but that 
didn’t happen very often on nights like these. She appreciated being able to see the 
sunrise, though. She knew that many people weren’t that lucky. Since it was still 
summer, the sky would be washed in muted oranges and pinks and purples most 
mornings. The world would be quiet for her to watch, and it was gorgeous. 
She hadn’t been sitting on the lifeguard tower for very long, but she could 
already feel the ocean calming her nerves. She felt more centered since sitting down, 
and more peaceful. At least, she didn’t think that much time had passed, but she lost 
track sometimes. 
Motion in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Someone was walking in 
the sand towards her. Sort of. They were struggling to get their footing. There were 
no lights on the beach, so she didn’t see who it was until they were up close. 
“Willow?” She called, confused. Willow was one of her closest friends. She 
was always happy to see her, but she wasn’t usually up this late. 
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“Hi, Olive,” Willow said, slightly out of breath. “What are you doing out here 
so late?” 
“How did you know I was here?” Olive responded, not answering the 
question. 
“Snap Maps, duh,” she said, climbing the tower ladder. 
“I didn’t say you could sit with me,” Olive said. She wasn’t actually mad, but 
she was enjoying the time to herself. She didn’t get to sit and just be very often. 
“You didn’t answer my question.” Willow sat beside her and copied her 
position. 
“I couldn’t sleep,” she shrugged. “Why are you up so late?” 
“Couldn’t sleep.” 
She eyed her skeptically. She could never tell when Willow was bluffing. 
“How’s the beach?” She asked. “The ocean still the same?” 
She glared at her. Willow wasn’t the biggest fan of the beach, but she endured 
it most of the time. 
Olive, however, loved the beach. She’d spend every minute of every day here 
if she could. 
She responded, “You’re a dumbass.” Willow rolled her eyes and turned 
towards the ocean. Even though she had interrupted Olive’s makeshift meditation, she 
still felt calm. 
“You know it’s, like, 4AM, right?” Willow asked after a long pause. 
Olive tried not to show that that bothered her. She was used to pulling all-
nighters, but she’d had trouble sleeping all week and had pulled a few more than 
normal. “Yeah.” 
She checked the time on her phone. Willow was right. 
The sun was supposed to be rising in the next hour. She knew she should go 
home and at least try to sleep, but she wanted to watch the sunrise from the lifeguard 
tower. In Olive’s opinion, sunrises on the beach were magical. Like taking a nap in 
the middle of the day. 
They sat in silence for a few minutes and listened to the waves crashing. The 
stars that night were bright, and the light of the moon illuminated the sand on the 
beach. 
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“You don’t have to stay out here with me, you know.” Olive said softly. “I 
know.” 
“Why couldn’t you sleep?” She asked, looking away from the ocean. 
 Willow shifted uncomfortably and sighed. “Dani broke up with me last night.” 
 Olive’s heart dropped. “Oh, Willow.” She reached an arm around her 
shoulders and pulled her into a one-armed hug. She put her head on Olive’s shoulder. 
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. 
 “It’s ok,” Willow responded. “It probably wasn’t going to work out much 
longer, anyways.” “Still,” she said. 
 “It’s ok,” she repeated. It wasn’t ok, but she knew Willow would talk about it 
in more detail later. Olive rubbed Willow’s arm through her tee shirt. She heard her 
sniff. 
 “Why didn’t you text me?” She asked gently, still rubbing her arm. “I wasn’t 
sure how I felt about it.” She whispered. “Still don’t.” 
 “That’s ok, take your time to process it.” Olive kissed the top of her head and 
lay her head on top of hers. She heard her sniff again. She couldn’t see her face, so 
she couldn’t see if she was crying or not, but she wouldn’t blame her. Willow and 
Dani had been dating for two years, and they were inseparable for most of it. Then, 
within the last few months, they started spending more time apart and the relationship 
seemed more strained. She didn’t know what had changed, but Willow didn’t talk 
about their relationship that much. Everything she knew was what she noticed from 
when all three of them would hang out together. She had tried to bring it up with 
Willow, but she would always brush it off. 
 Silence fell once again, and they sat there quietly until the sky began to 
lighten. Birds began to chirp from their nests in the bushes, and a few seagulls flew 
overhead. The sun appeared over the horizon, the first rays of sunlight stretching 
across the sky, and a light breeze began to blow. The world was beginning to wake 
up. 
 “You ready to go?” She whispered. They hadn’t moved from where they sat, 
Willow’s head on Olive’s shoulder, Olive’s head on Willow’s, and her arm wrapped 
around her shoulders. 
 “Yeah,” she responded quietly. Willow wiped her face and sniffed again. 
“Yeah,” she repeated in her normal tone of voice. They each grabbed the bar that 
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protected the edge of the tower and used it to stand up together before climbing down 
the ladder. 
 Olive gave Willow another hug. “It’s going to be ok,” she said into her 
shoulder. She felt her nod. 
 She let go so they could walk back to the parking lot. The sky turned light blue 
as they walked, and the sand was still cool under her feet. She felt herself getting 
sleepy, and her head was quiet. 
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English

Driftwood

Rock, Máire

Fragments 
Volume 64 Emergence Article 6 
2022 
Protect the Throne 
Máire Rock 
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Recommended Citation 
Rock, Máire (2022) "Protect the Throne," Fragments: Vol. 64, Article 6. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol64/iss1/6 
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 1 
Protect the Throne 
By Máire Rock 
 
“You wouldn’t” she said, her hands twisting and turning in her lap. 
“I would, and I will” he said forcefully, slamming his hands on the desk and pushing himself upwards.  
“You can’t force m—" 
“NO” he yelled, cutting her off. “No more discussion. No more “Please Fathers.” No more any of it. It 
has been decided. And not another word” he said, turning around with his finger already pointed at her 
“out of you.” 
Her mouth snapped shut, the words that she had been about to yell back dying on the tip of her tongue. 
He ran his fingers through his hair, the tiredness coming off of him in waves as he paced behind the 
desk.  
He looked at her with the bags under his eyes, and asked her with desperation creeping into his voice 
“Why? Why now? Why wait till the midnight hour?” 
She looked down at her hands, at the hem of her dress pooling at her feet. She shifted, and in the 
smallest voice he had ever heard her speak in, she said “I just…I just don’t love him.” 
“Love?” he said, shaking his head with a small chuckle. “You have now decided that you care about 
loving him?” his voice raising with every word.  
“Father I—” 
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“We have been through months of talks with his family. He was chosen out of the best families in the 
kingdom, and we even gave you a choice out of the three boys! We didn’t give your brother a choice. 
He’s the heir. We didn’t give your older sister a choice. We had to solidify the alliance with Ventra. 
But you,” he said, his voice low with anger “You’re the third. You got the choice. Even when you 
didn’t deserve one. And ten minutes before you walk down the aisle, you suddenly decide, that loving 
him, that’s the dealbreaker? You would risk everything because of one small detail?” 
She opened her mouth, but all the words that were so ready to come out just moments before were 
nowhere to be found. The small voice in her head told her to give up. Shouldn’t she be so lucky? He 
was right. Kaden and Alya didn’t get that choice. She did. But she saw how Kaden’s wife wasn’t 
happy. How her head bowed whenever anyone walked by. And when she did manage to get a glimpse 
of her eyes at the dinner table, it was like tears were threatening to spill over into her soup. No, she 
wouldn’t become like Kaden’s wife. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t bow down. Damn the consequences, 
she would not be forced into a marriage for something she did not even do. Even though she had 
admitted to it, she thought guiltily.  
She stood up, pulling herself to look directly into her father’s eyes.  
“It’s not a choice. Not from where I stand. And I don’t love him, and I won’t marry him, no matter 
what you say.” She said, squaring her shoulders. “You cannot make me. You tell Kaden to jump, and 
he asks how high. You tell Alya where to go and she rushes to please you. But not me. You can’t 
control me.” she yelled, releasing all her pent-up anger.  
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Her father chuckled softly. “Oh Synové” he said, getting up and moving around the desk towards her. 
“It’s Syn,” she said quietly. He waved his hand dismissively. 
“Synové, it’s time you realized that as long as you are under my roof, I will always control you. Now,” 
he said, walking up to her and grasping her forearm tightly, “You are walking down that aisle now or 
so help me, I will risk the entire reputation of this kingdom and my family and tell everyone the reason 
why we rushed this courtship.” 
She blanched but held firm and didn’t say a word. Her mind whirled, trying to think. How to get out? 
How to get out? One thought took over. Protect Kaden. Protect the throne. All those years of deference 
to the family took over, and like a balloon, all the fight went out of her. She turned to her dad and gave 
him a small nod. 
“That’s my girl,” he said, finally releasing her. They walked towards the door, and he opened it for her, 
and her attendant came in and grabbed her train. She walked down the long hallway numbly to the big 
oak doors. As she paused in front of them, she took a breath. The royal attendant looked at her and she 
have him a small nod. With that, he gave the doors three strong resounding knocks that echoed through 
the hall. 
Boom 
Her breath caught.  
Boom 
Her palms started to sweat. 
Boom 
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Her heart started to race.  
Someone pressed a small bouquet of tulips into her hands, but she barely felt them. The doors creaked 
open, and the music began to play. Mechanically she walked down the aisle with prim and proper 
steps. Her vision blurred, and the only person that she could focus on was her father up at the front and 
the look of quiet satisfaction on his face. As she reached the dais, she knelt and looked up, and he gave 
her a small nod. She knew if she raised herself up, he would win. She looked over and saw Kaden 
standing next to his wife in the front row, his face happy, his eyes sad.  
“Protect the family,” her inner mantra said quietly. That pushed her. That made her rise up and accept 
her fate. 
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Protect the Throne

Zeve, Amelia

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 3 
2021 
Teeth 
Amelia Zeve 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Zeve, Amelia (2021) "Teeth," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 3. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/3 
This Prose is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
Teeth
Amelia Zeve
When I can’t sleep I sift through the life I’ve lived like a thin, fine flour. There are moments that
won’t plunge through the silver metal of the sieve. I hold them. They are the size of a tooth, hard
as diamonds. I pick at them, too intensely, until my fingertips spark with blood and sinew.
The moments I can’t categorize are not chronological. I let them fall and bumble into each other
like dirty snow.
There is much I can’t explain but Conor is first. His story blossoms across my mind like an ink
stain. Did you know that in the first movies they used ink instead of blood? My first job on a film
set, we filmed a scene where the protagonists burst down the doors of a neonazi militia.
Production put me inside the room they broke into, peppered with swastikas, directly out of view
of the two cameras that snaked through the scene.
I was closest to Conor freshman year, living in the same hall as him. Sometimes he would hobble
to my room after a rugby match and I would give him Advil and water, pressing them softly into
the palm of his hand like tiny robin's eggs.
Did you know that in movies today, they simulate realism in gun scenes by firing blanks from
real weapons? It was my third day on set. I have never felt an automatic weapon so close. It
made my teeth rattle. Junior year of high school someone threatened to shoot our campus and we
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went into lockdown, and my English teacher panicked so badly she asked me to tell my
classmates what to do.
Conor ended up getting so many concussions that he was barred from rugby before freshman
year even ended. In my mind, Conor always remains on the bench of a rugby match, dark brow
furrowed over the fact that he can’t play.
I see glints of metal out of the corner of my eye as the noise of gunfire booms around me,
hundreds and hundreds of rounds as Production keeps shooting the scene over and over and over
and over. I hear them start rolling and automatic weapon fire races closer to me on all sides,
I am shaking and I want to throw up but I can’t—
In my mind Conor is always telling me the same story. The night after he returned from spring
break, he laid down in his twin bed to go to sleep and his hand brushed against something under
his pillow. He had been the last person to leave his dorm, and the first person to come back.
Did you know the blood they use in movies today pools and sticks on carpet? Did you know you
will find it on your shoes sometimes when you are alone in the hotel? Did you know that when
you scrape at it with your fingers, the gummy, throaty heft of it will get stuck under your nails?
When I pick at this memory, I wonder what Conor felt as he drew the object out. It was small,
smooth. He must have been confused, probably not yet frightened. Did he ever think it was a
missing Advil I had given him?
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Every time I hear the story, his face when he flicks the light on and discovers what the object is
changes in my mind. Sometimes it plays as horror, sometimes fearful amusement, and sometimes
his eyes disappear and his face is just skin.
Did you know, in movies today, bodies on the ground look dead even when you watch them
stand up and walk away after?
When Conor looked at his hand, he saw that he was holding the tooth of a child. A back canine,
small and white, bloody at the root. It was not the tooth in itself that was wholly disturbing, but
the fact that it had somehow spirited itself into his locked and empty third floor dorm room.
The next day Conor told me, laughing, but his eyes watered and hair stood up on his arms. He
told me he couldn’t sleep that night or the night after, trying to explain how it could have gotten
there. I asked him how he finally explained it.
My memory all goes red here, like a vial of blood dumped in water, at the point in the story
where he told me he couldn’t.
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Teeth

Pazen, Michael

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 13 
2021 
Standard Sunday Schedule 
Michael Pazen 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Pazen, Michael (2021) "Standard Sunday Schedule," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 13. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/13 
This Prose is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
Standard Sunday Schedule (Morning Loop) 
Michael Pazen 
 
 
My eyelids shift aside so I can greet the light, softened by the fog outside. I stretch and groan in my 
safe haven, bargain for more time, cast my consciousness into a screen to cease slipping back into 
slumber, and send a picture in response to the one waiting for me. My little device brings me 
connection and isolation in equal measure. Today, it brings me enough of an excuse and a disruption to 
launch my legs through the depth, away from the warmth, towards the cool carpet, into a larger world, 
and onto responsibility and expectation.  
 
Release rolls over into relaxation; cold, clean water erupts from a facet, shattering the morning stillness 
with its gurgle. One outlet shifts to another, and the churning cascade is a scattered drizzle, the pitter 
patter of clouds made tame. I shed my second skin as steam shyly starts to streak my splitting image. 
The corners of my likeness obfuscate, and I glance at my form rendered back onto me as I step from 
shiver to shower. Flocks of geese take laps beneath my skin, prickling the surface under the sudden 
heat. I am warm again. I am awake.  
 
Time collapses; the deluge is reduced to a drip and a drop too soon. The collateral to my cleanliness 
has colonized my kindly glass; the edges of my body blur and bleed behind condensation’s facade. I 
overflow into my space, made mine through time and trinket; I expand into my things and into my 
memories, and I feel the presences of those who came before, those who will come after. This 
inviolable place is but a gate we pass through, and when it crumbles into sediment it, too, shall be 
subducted.  
 
I remove the lingering liquid from all the places I can reach, and I push forth from my created subtropic 
only to be jolted by a chill that never left. It’s fucking cold. I hurry to arm myself against my body’s bid 
to heat the world; selfishly, I seek to trap my temperature inside long sleeves and double socks to rally, 
once more, against thermal equilibrium. My choices have closed off portions of myself from the world; 
each option afforded to me seems to promise the same conventional outcome.  
 
How easily we forget that there are always alternatives. 
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Standard Sunday Schedule

Adams, Michael Elizabeth

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 43 
2021 
Solidarity in Domesticity 
Michael Elizabeth Adams 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Adams, Michael Elizabeth (2021) "Solidarity in Domesticity," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 43. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/43 
This Visual Art is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
 
Solidarity in Domesticity 
Michael Elizabeth Adams 
 
 
 
 
  
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michaelelizabeth.squarespace.com 
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Solidarity in Domesticity

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