Open Access Journals at IU Indianapolis

Jekel, Jordan

FDA Preemption: Pros, Cons, & a Path Forward for Publish Health in the 21st Century

Brown, Sarah

Indiana\u27s Punitive Responses to Prenatal Marijuana Use: A Recommendation for the Indiana Legislature

Wright, R. George

The Loper Bright Regulatory Landscape

Cunningham, Monica

38
12” x 24” Oil Paint
Monica Cunningham
Art is Having Fun


English

Art is Having Fun

Terhorst, Elizabeth

108
     Summertime was always my favorite as a child, but I’m not a child anymore.  
     During my childhood, my mother would drive my sister and I up to the beach 
house. We’d spend the summer hunting for seashells and skipping stones across 
the waves while Mom would gather wood for us to roast the fish Dad caught at 
work. It was perfect. It made leaving once Labor Day rolled around that much 
harder.  
     For years, in the middle of summer when the nauseous heat clung to the 
undersides of our bones, our mother’s brother would come to visit. He’d arrive in 
the dead of night, the only time the heat was tempered by the promise of morning 
dew still smokey from the previous evening’s campfire. His bags were so heavy, 
the straps dug into his shoulders in such a painful manner. The long tubes of iron 
hidden within the zippers and pockets rattled against his femur with each uneven 
step he took. 
     I always loved when he’d visit. As a small child, I’d run up to him and throw 
myself into his arms. There was something about his deep laugh that felt so com-
forting to me. Maybe it was only mid-embrace when I heard him laugh like that. 
We’d spin around, and once he’d set me down, he’d wrap his tri-colored polyes-
ter around me. I’d wear it so proudly– running around the house with it waving 
like a flag behind me.  
     He’d put his bags in the guest bedroom and give my mother an apple pie. It 
was cinnamony and sweet, but the doughy crust was salty. It flaked apart in my 
mouth and melted on my tongue. Mom would scold my sister and me for sneak-
ing pieces of it before dinner, but our uncle would just smile and slide us slivers 
under the table.  
     He’d leave dirty finger prints on our mother’s white plates. He always smelled 
like charcoal and sulfur, and no matter how many times he said he’d washed and 
changed, the dark powder remained under his nails and behind his ears.  
     Today, my uncle wakes me from my uneasy sleep. Seventeen years old, and 
I had long since outgrown the twin-sized mattress my mother bought for me the 
first summer we had the beach house. He beckons me to come hither, to follow 
him out to the beach. Rubbing my face, I stumble behind him. The sand is cool 
from the morning dew beading on the few strands of grass out this close to the 
ocean. Twilight still lingers, but the dawn is creeping up off of the horizon and 
Elizabeth Terhorst
Sammy
109
bringing the brilliant sun with her monstrous, muggy heat. He is sitting near the 
water, his legs and the waves all white with foam. I sit next to him, shivering un-
til he strong arms me against him. My uncle points towards the sky where we can 
see birds fly across the dying dark blue –red cut through sky with white underbel-
lies, chirping as they dance around each other’s beady hawk-eyes and eagle-like 
talons. His tight grasp is warm against the perilous winds rolling off of the waves, 
but it makes me think of when I would watch him and my sister huddled up on 
the shore all those summers ago. 
     As a child, I watched him wake my sister from her slumber every July, and 
they’d sit with the sand sparkling around them with the first light of dawn. There 
are still divots from my eager fingernails in the wood panelling of my window 
from when I would watch. 
     But, Liberty left so long ago. 
     Now, it’s just Uncle Sammy and me underneath an endless skyway.  
     Up close, and with the morning fog lifting up towards the fading smoke, Sam-
my doesn’t look how he did from my bedroom window all those golden years 
ago. His smile has hardened and his top hat has grown askew. Even his apple pie 
recipe has changed, and the changes remain unpardoned.  
     The iron barrels he keeps hidden under his bed no longer make my home feel 
as sweet, and the draft is to come sweeping through my house soon. I know Sam-
my will take me away as coldly and swifty as he took all the other boys in our 
family. It will not be slow and searing like my sister’s departure. 
     As children, he promised her and I that as long as we stood with God in our 
hearts and him in our hands, we’d never fall. But, I fear I cannot trust in our bond 
anymore; I don’t feel safe nor brave in his arms. Yet, I long for the summers 
when I was a child with Liberty by my side. It pains me to say I do not love sum-
mertime anymore. 


Sammy

Garris, Hayden

Dinner at Fabbro’s

Guzman, Dayanara

184
My Quinceañera, 2019 
Pristine princess with a porcelain face 
dressed head to toe in rose and gold.  
Curls coiled and still in place. Our last waltz  
while the triumph trumpets of womanhood 
trumpets through the air like victory claimed, 
but the little girl inside me has died, 
the ashes disguised as shimmer  
embroidered on her skirt.  
I whisper my goodbyes in her ear as I hold  
her tight. I tell her she will sit in my bedroom  
and watch my Converse change into flats  
and the sweatpants turn into skirts, and that some day  
we’ll both be punished by daggered eyes.  
I have now grown into my mother’s face and  
my father’s charm. I am at the cusp  
of adulthood yet I still remember  
her trim and lace swaying  
while her crown stayed in place.  
I am no longer the girl that held her 
but the woman that she helped raise. 
Dayanara Guzman
Muñeca 


Muñeca

189
Where did you get it? The one that reflected 
my rosewood lips, draped over  
my face like a rosary and slipped  
in my mouth like communion. 
Does sativa still turn your cheeks red 
like the cherry burning in your bowl? 
Does it remind you of mine 
after a hit or two? In the smoke,  
do you picture our faces? Or has  
the haze swiped your mind. 
Is that why you resurfaced on my phone? Did  
the look in her eyes remind you of mine? 
Responding to you now just feels like a waste 
for your absence has made my heart stronger. 
 
So, was the grass greener on her side?  
Or is it fading like the ungodly olive  
colored bomber jacket I borrowed one night?  
Is it wrong if you still linger in my mind?  
Dayanara Guzman
Gold Cross Chain


Gold Cross Chain

Miller, Levi

Punk Was Dead

Weber, Maura

196
     We linger in the air above the dirty laundry and the stripped mattress. My lips 
are still burning from where you kissed me, my cheek still stinging from the slap 
that came before. My chin is raw from your stubble and stings as I cry salty tears 
that bead and slip, bead and slip, bead and slip. There are traces of you in my 
hair, sticky on the back of my neck. I’m not a person, and neither are you. We are 
vapor, gasps of hot air and choked curses. We are sweat, sticky and cooling on 
clammy skin. We are knots, tangling in our bellies. 
     Strands of my hair are loose from where you pulled my ponytail until I fell for 
you. Now, the whisps snake around my neck like a collar. Your hand finds its way 
to my throat and slams me down, spitting in my face and growling don’t you ever 
do that again. I’ve disobeyed you, a cardinal sin. 
     An egg is cracked over the top of my head, cold wobbly yolk running over 
my hot brain and down my back. Your teeth are gnashing and my spit is flying as 
white-hot confusion takes over the wheel. Like a fox in a trap, I beg. I gnaw at 
the frail tendons in my leg, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I am stupid. I am ugly. 
I deserve this. Please, please, let me make it up to you. I’m sorry. I’m nothing.  
     Finally, you let go of my neck. You morph from a monster back into a man, 
leaving me bent over the mattress and shaking as I come back to myself. I stare 
at the ceiling while you put your shirt back on and try not to think about how my 
body feels like a live wire in the snow. My mouth tastes like a battery, sour and 
metallic.  I close my eyes and take three deep breaths, hoping I come back to 
myself before you start crying like a child who’s broken his favorite toy. 
     I slip off the bed and onto the floor, rooting around the filthy carpet for my 
socks. Selfishly, I hope you keep me under your bed with the rest of your dirty 
laundry. I hope you hang me in the closet with the rest of your skeletons. I hope 
you never display me like the other notches in your bedpost. I hope this makes 
me special. 
Maura Weber
The Vapor


The Vapor

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