ScholarWorks @ SeattleU (Seattle University)

Marwood, Merceded

Fragments 
Volume 62 Interlude Article 12 
2020 
everything but the middle 
Merceded Marwood 
Seattle University 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Marwood, Merceded (2020) "everything but the middle," Fragments: Vol. 62, Article 12. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/12 
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. 
1 
 
everything but the middle 
Mercedes Marwood 
 
 
When me and you were new i had this thought in my head, and i didn’t recognize the 
voice so i decided it was you penetrating my mind. The thought came when we were 
curled up on the same pillow and it said I’m gonna kill this girl. and i was scared one 
of us was going to die, or change, or fade away. but i forgot and we turned pink 
together and i read your thoughts more freely. They came into me like water and i 
saw words form from dust and float away. my thoughts came to you like strings of 
red and pink and blue. i wanted to see how close we could get. to walk inside you, 
lover. Like the tide, i couldn’t watch to see the moment of dissolve. death rolled over. 
love is like a heart attack. who stabbed elliot. figure eight. i lost the photograph we 
took outside a bar on the water i’d been to years before. the circle. The swans outside 
never touching each other. and late on a quiet night, i walked to them for solace. i was 
all alone, i sat under the willows and in the dark i heard them screaming. first one but 
then all of them in a tumbling release. and then i sat for awhile and feared the rolling 
waves. I’ve been a lizard, always on my toes. body tight. face smooth and high. if i 
squeeze tighter ill loose my core. a donut, a pool toy. infinitely smaller and infinitely 
getting larger. but I’ve been putting them on the same page again, and i remember 
what hand is mine. 
1
Marwood: everything but the middle
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2020


English

everything but the middle

Silverman, Madeline

Fragments 
Volume 62 Interlude Article 14 
2020 
Applesauce 
Madeline Silverman 
Seattle University 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Silverman, Madeline (2020) "Applesauce," Fragments: Vol. 62, Article 14. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/14 
This Poetry 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. 
1 
 
Applesauce 
Madeline Silverman 
 
 
The ancient dignified apple tree 
that stands 
as the proud guardian 
of my home 
didn’t bear fruit this year 
and even though we all knew this was to be expected, 
it still shook us to our roots. 
The tradition that we love must 
hibernate until next fall. 
 
Last year, 
after the dirty boots and hands-- 
soiled from 
stacking wood into neat rows 
and waking potatoes from their deep slumber-- 
had been washed, 
we would seek refuge 
in the fact that 
as soon as we tramped in the door, 
the roaming scent of apples and cinnamon 
and my mother’s love 
would sweep us up 
and we would be nourished. 
 
Sometimes 
she and I 
would peer into 
steaming pots of pink velvet 
1
Silverman: Applesauce
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2020
2 
 
and we would 
stir and adjust. 
We wouldn’t even have to 
talk to understand the thread that bound us tight. 
And although I griped and moaned 
about the time wasted 
picking and 
scrubbing 
and slicing 
every 
weekend, 
there is something unmistakably absent 
amongst the smell of crisp air, 
sharp like a pleat, 
and the tangy smell of sweat 
after the chores. 
There will be no applesauce this year. 
 
That tree, 
that graceful, venerable tree, 
was just too tired. 
 
We’ll carry our 
tradition and hope 
into next year. 
2
Fragments, Vol. 62 [2020], Art. 14
https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/14


Applesauce

Klosowski, Daniel

Fragments 
Volume 62 Interlude Article 27 
2020 
Just Impending 
Daniel Klosowski 
Seattle University 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Klosowski, Daniel (2020) "Just Impending," Fragments: Vol. 62, Article 27. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/27 
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. 
1
Klosowski: Just Impending
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2020


Just Impending

Pazen, Michael

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 12 
2021 
Everything is Mostly Nothing 
Michael Pazen 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Pazen, Michael (2021) "Everything is Mostly Nothing," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 12. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/12 
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. 
1 
 
Everything is Mostly Nothing 
Michael Pazen 
 
First, death; then, life. Does that seem backwards? Every life-form on Earth depends on the existence of 
carbon, but carbon is only formed in the hearts of stars, expelled, when they die, into incomprehensible 
stretches of nothingness. Only through these fatal bangs! are the mere kernels of life scattered into dust. 
Only through brilliant demise may we know the comforts of primordial ooze and stalwart evolution. First, 
death; then, life. 
 
When I was fifteen, I went to the first funeral that I can remember. In a small church nestled deep within 
pine-rich mountains and narrow dirt roads, we gathered. It was quiet—no one spoke or coughed or sneezed 
or sniffled. We were here to mourn; the needle’s crunch underfoot, the calls of the birds, the sounds of the 
small, scampering creatures: these and more than these filled the silence.  
 
Halfway through the funeral service, a young girl ran outside. She was my friend, so I followed her out. I 
watched as she emptied her stomach onto the soil, listened as her frail wails worked their way sky bound, 
heard her cries as they bounced off the bark and the branches. Her face, red and twisted, contorted with 
pain, seemed to burn, to radiate hurt out and out and out.  
 
After the funeral, three of us are racing through the twisting mountain paths. It is dark, and we are 
screaming. The engine’s roar cascades as our throats grow sore and we soar past 40, 50—at 60 mph we’re 
outpacing our sorrow. We are standing as we holler, bare-chested and brazen, top-heavy car listing 
perilously over valleys, ditches, the wind’s whip lashing our faces, our torsos, tearing tears from our eyes as 
they form and carrying the name of the departed into the night sky. We are reckless and in pain, ignited and 
on fire. We are remembering.  
 
1
Pazen: Everything is Mostly Nothing
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021
2 
 
Do you think you’ve died before? A stopped heart is a no-brainer, but what of the living? The boy who 
bounded through those mountains is myself no longer; those who stood by my side have ceased to occupy 
the same form. The cells in the upper layers of our skin, the epidermis, are constantly replacing themselves. 
Our organs change size and we get taller and then shorter; food and waste take up space and move through 
us, blood is lost and re-made. We are transient.  
 
I know we like to pretend. We like to pretend that things last, that they endure, that lives are not moments 
and worlds are not temporary. We climb on top of your roof, and with our backs laid gingerly upon the 
shingles, we gaze into the night. We speak of silly things, of futures known and imagined; we share dreams, 
comforted perhaps by the stars and their illusions of permanence, those flickers and their fictions of forever. 
It’s nice to pretend.  
 
The second funeral hanged from the highway for months. No one thought to cut her down.  
 
Her suicide knocked the air right out, stole joy and hope and obscured them, kept them hidden away. That 
crippling blow rendered her best friend unrecoverable; when last we spoke, she told me that there was no 
one else. That the impact had forced her into a new mode of existence. The loss—and loss is so inadequate a 
word—made sure it would be felt for a lifetime, at least. 
 
“We gotta stop meeting at funerals,” I say. You agree with me. You tell me how many you’ve been to this 
year, and the number’s too high. I can’t remember what it was, but it was too high. We were just kids, 
goddammit. We were just kids.  
 
When we make the tentative shift from body to corpse, our cells, deprived of oxygen (due to a heart that 
won’t beat and two lungs that won’t inflate), start to digest themselves. Microbes in our gut invade our heart 
and brain and feed off acid that leaks through burst seams; the life within us, ravenous, consumes.  
 
2
Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 12
https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/12
3 
 
I thought of killing myself often when I was younger. When my will to live returned, my friend’s gave him 
the slip. There is no panic, no fear, no impetus like the one felt when speeding to the home of a dying man. 
My fingers were threaded through his hair while he sobbed into my shoulder, and I told the police where to 
find us.  
 
Nearly 8,000 people die in the United States alone every day. Hundreds to thousands more due to COVID-
19, senseless deaths. With each goes a world entire. But an end is not the end, and the departed are never far 
from us. The moments when we are together do not change when we are not. You are there, waiting to meet 
me for the first time, just as you are there when we say our last goodbye. In every smile, every laugh, every 
shining moment, we are together; what we produced does not, has not, cannot disappear.  
 
When my body is claimed by rot and fungi, my words will stay tucked in your lexicon, my habits in your 
routines; a slice of my very being in your memory, distorted and intact. And the tears that flee from your 
face shall fall upon the Earth and spur new growth. Everything changes; nothing is lost. 
 
We are borne into the present, and we carry with us those that came before. My spine is not my spine; it is 
the composite act of survival and selection, bred and descended from countless ancestors and their mistakes; 
from the first creatures to leave the sea, from the stars that used their fuel to give us a chance. We inherit life 
beyond life before we take our first breaths; built upon millions of years, all those deaths stand solemnly by 
our side. 
 
And they rejoice! Every sacred moment we are alive, they rejoice. When we quiet ourselves, we can hear 
their celebration; when we listen, we can hear their cheers, can hear the gentle pulses of life begetting life in 
a grand and futile attempt to grasp one moment more. We shall all go extinct, you and I, for our very 
universe is bounded and finite, yet before we end, our carbon, our atoms, shall disperse once more as they 
dispersed before, to where we cannot know, but can hope, can believe, to someplace that feels like home.  
3
Pazen: Everything is Mostly Nothing
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021


Everything is Mostly Nothing

Corvidae, Aeon

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 20 
2021 
Under the Same Sky 
Aeon Corvidae 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Corvidae, Aeon (2021) "Under the Same Sky," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 20. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/20 
This Poetry 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. 
UNDER THE SAME SKY 
By Aeon Corvidae 
 
 
 
I am under the same sky that has seen people erased; 
Fires burn and rivers replaced. 
Industries pollute with toxic waste, 
Theriocide all over the place. 
 
Destruction of art, capturing ancient Earth 
By foreign settlers, that didn’t see it’s worth. 
Cultures that die, fighting for their rebirth, 
Natives to the land moved around to newly built turf. 
 
People of color are being “eaten alive” 
Communities ban together, driven to rise. 
Music, painting, sculpture capturing time, 
Systematic racism generates a struggle to survive. 
 
Healthcare systems holding on to racial bias. 
Black Americans put in hospitals due to racial violence. 
No access to fresh air, water, and foods causing higher rates of 
death. 
Streets fill. Rise now! protesting all of this. 
 
Colorful neighborhoods are taken over 
Gentrified, robbed of their own culture. 
Torn down, generations buried under- 
Modern palaces for the wealthiest of comfort. 
1
Corvidae: Under the Same Sky
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021


Under the Same Sky

Silverman, Madeline McNamara

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 28 
2021 
Continental / Oceanic 
Madeline McNamara Silverman 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Silverman, Madeline McNamara (2021) "Continental / Oceanic," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 28. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/28 
This Poetry 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. 
Continental / Oceanic 
Michael Pazen 
 
warm hums and muted clanks  
stretch leisurely about. 
 
heart facing skyward, 
spine parallel with the  
 
apple-skin sediment  
of a behemoth. 
such  
      small  
            sounds  
plunge my mind deep  
into the core: 
 
pressures unfathomable  
lightless, ancient swirls  
churning  
       and  
             yearning 
for simplicity. 
 
to stop the tumble  
of created entropy. 
 
I, too, 
seek  
a  
pause  
1
Silverman: Continental / Oceanic
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021


Continental / Oceanic

Jondonovan, Pia

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 44 
2021 
study of an edward hopper etching 
Pia Jondonovan 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Jondonovan, Pia (2021) "study of an edward hopper etching," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 44. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/44 
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. 
Pia Jondonovan 
study of an edward hopper etching 
 
  
1
Jondonovan: study of an edward hopper etching
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021
study of steven boksenbaum’s “maria seated” 
 
2
Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 44
https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/44
two deaths 
 
3
Jondonovan: study of an edward hopper etching
Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021


study of an edward hopper etching

Gogo Deleon, “The Soulless AI Manifesto”
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Jean Simpson, “AI Chatbots & Impacts on Adolescent Empathic Development”
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Seattle University

AI and Academia: Manifestos, Research, & Undergraduate Voices

Editors of The Spectator

Spectator 2025-05-29

Willette, James

Lichterman, Hilary

Seattle University 
ScholarWorks @ SeattleU 
The Spectator Online Newspapers 
5-21-2025 
2025-05-21 Letter to the Editor Re: Trans Students & Housing 
Selection 
James Willette 
Hilary Lichterman 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/spectator-online 
The Spectator • May 21, 2025 • https://seattlespectator.com/2025/05/21/letter-to-the-editor-re-trans-
students-housing-selection/
Letter to the Editor Re: Trans
Students & Housing Selection
James Willette and Hilary Lichterman
Dear Spectator Editor,
We are writing in response to the “Trans Students Struggle to Secure Safe Housing” article published last week in the Spectator.
Although the students who shared their experiences for the article encountered difficulty navigating the online housing portal, this
was due to user error and not related to the students’ gender identities. Seattle University and our Housing & Residence Life (HRL)
team care deeply about trans and gender non-conforming students and take proactive steps to create a safe and inclusive
residential community for all students. One way we demonstrate care and live into our commitment to supporting and affirming
trans and gender non-conforming students is through our “Gender Inclusive Housing Policy.” The policy allows students to live with
other students who share their gender identity and/or who are affirming of their gender identity. The policy also allows students to
use our online housing portal to search for or be matched with roommates who share or affirm their gender identity, or to create
roommate groups of their choosing who can then select an available room or apartment together during the housing selection
process.
The students referenced in the article encountered an error in the online housing portal because they didn’t follow the instructions
for setting up their roommate groups in the portal with adequate time for the system to process their requests. HRL provides ample
notice and several reminders about this process in advance to help students have a seamless user experience. If students try to
create a roommate group and select a room too close to their appointment time (same day/day before), a warning will pop up on
screen to alert them to the error. We also have information on the roommate group page that lets students know that if they create
roommate groups on the same day/day before, they should contact the HRL office to ensure their groups are set up correctly so
they don’t run into errors.
Other than the few students who create same-day/day-before roommate groups and don’t contact the office to request assistance,
we rarely hear about students experiencing issues navigating the online housing portal. The error the students in the article ran
into, which does not happen frequently, would have happened to any roommate group who tried to create their group and select a
room on the same day as their housing selection appointment time.
The reporting in The Spectator is unfortunate because it suggests that the HRL team neither cares about our trans and gender non-
conforming students nor considered their experiences when developing the housing selection process. This narrative couldn’t be
further from the truth. HRL goes above and beyond to accommodate students’ housing needs to the best of their ability and
constantly considers how our processes, systems, and language influence students’ sense of belonging and inclusion on campus.
Much of the housing selection process language and workflow comes directly from feedback and suggestions from students,
including members of the Triangle Club and other student leaders.
All of the students referenced in the article were contacted by HRL and provided assistance to ensure they were able to select a
room with their roommate groups. While students don’t always get the exact rooms they want, HRL does everything it can to honor
the needs and preferences of all students in their efforts to create an outstanding residential experience that is safe and inclusive.
HRL also endeavors to incorporate student feedback to make ongoing improvements to our systems in order to create a seamless
and welcoming experience. Students who have questions, concerns, or suggestions about the online housing portal, the housing
selection process, or any other part of their residential experience are invited and encouraged to contact HRL by visiting in-person
in Campion 100 (8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Mondays thru Fridays), calling (206) 296-6305, or emailing housing@seattleu.edu. 
