Late Night Thoughts // Bernardo Moreno

            The air tastes stale. The light from my computer screen hurts my eyes, and the constant fight between the heater under my TV and the winter cold that leaks through the white concrete walls somehow makes me feel drowsy.

            I should have started doing my homework earlier.

            I’m anxiously sipping on my protein shake; it tastes like dirty water mixed with a little bit of chocolate, but the unpalatable taste in my mouth keeps me awake. My body is sore from late night tennis practice and conditioning, as usual.

            In an attempt to procrastinate, I look at my phone. The brightness of it blinds me for a second or two. Nobody has texted me, and the brightness of it blinds me for a second or two. It’s 1 A.M. and a million thoughts cross my mind, anything that would keep me away from doing my homework.

            I miss my family. Actually, never mind, now that I think about it, I don’t really miss them. What I long for is the feeling of my socks against the floor and the smell of coffee on a Sunday morning. A nostalgic poison slowly fills my head as I try to go back to doing my homework.  

***

Vertebrae
Elvis Castro // charcoal

            “Bernardo, wake up honey,” I hear softly.

I couldn’t really see who was there. My eyes were blinded by the sun peeking through the curtains. The smell of warm blankets was sedating. The pillow under my head felt as if was an anchor keeping it from moving. 

            “Bernardo, your mom told you to wake up!” I hear now, louder.

            After a couple of seconds of staring at my ceiling in an attempt to shake off the confusion of waking up, I finally get out of my bed. I go over my usual morning routine, brushing my teeth, fixing my hair, and putting on a shirt. When I’m finally done I start walking to my door, still wearing my pajama pants and socks.

            I walk down the stairs to the ground floor of the house. The sensation of my socks against the floor has a certain Sunday morning feeling, maybe because it is. I sit down across from my dad at the round glass dining table like I do every Sunday. The sunshine makes everything feel warm and welcoming. The colors of the fake fruit in the middle of the table look so vibrant that it tempts me to take a bite. We have had them for years, but they do not seem to age aside from a bite mark. Was it me?

            I get distracted from my thoughts for a second as I realize that my dad’s balding is noticeable enough to reflect some sunshine coming from the windows. I look down and see that he is wearing his pajama pants; the soccer shirt he’s wearing is too big for him but it’s his favorite shirt.  He wears it to the gym a lot. His messy clothes do not match his usual serious demeanor. He is a doctor, after all.

            My dad, as usual, is absorbed in the newspaper, completely ignoring anything around him except his coffee. I can smell it from across the table. His toast is a little burned, but after every bite, he helps it go down by loudly sipping his coffee. When he sets his mug down, I notice that it matches his eyes. The timing between the crunch from the toast and the sipping from his coffee emulates a metronome, so paced, so precise.

            I shift my attention when he turns the page. All I can think of now is how I’m going to get my sister to leave the small living room next to the dining room, which has a huge TV. I want her to leave so I can game on my PlayStation all day. She is too tall for me to fight and too old to be watching reality shows, at least in my opinion. Her straight posture combined with long dark hair and brown eyes reminds me of a German Shepherd we use to have. She is intimidating. She is in really good shape too, so I probably couldn’t outrun her with the TV remote.

            Suddenly, I’m hit by the smell of eggs sizzling on the pan, and I turn my attention to the kitchen stove. My mom is cooking some for me and my dad. The smell of fried eggs and cereal compliments the morning feeling. Her golden hair matches the sunshine. While my sister and my dad are both intimidatingly taller than me, my mom is the only one shorter than me. I find comfort in our shared green eyes as she turns around and smiles at me. She will defend me from my sister if things go bad. She always defends me when my older sisters try to bully me, but she yells at me probably as much. It’s a tradeoff, I guess.

            I wait impatiently for the food she is cooking. Her cooking is the best; after all, she used to own a restaurant. Her food has a certain taste. I can’t seem to know what makes it so special, but nothing compares to it.

            My middle sister is nowhere to be seen, probably still sleeping. Whatever; she sleeps past noon every Sunday. No one seems to care enough to wake her up. I certainly won’t; she’s scary when she is angry.

            My little Yorkshire terrier watches me sit down and stares at me impatiently, waiting for leftovers. She waves her tail frantically as I lean over to pet her. I love her, but I don’t like to take her for walks; it diminishes my masculinity.

            “Where’s the cat?” I ask, not specifically to anyone.

            “How would I know?” replies my mom, a little annoyed.

            My dad completely ignores us both, still absorbed by the newspaper. The cat is probably sleeping somewhere. Lucky little fuck, I think to myself.

            I’m still intoxicated by the thoughts of my bed.

            It is a nice Sunday morning.






Author:

Bernardo Cadario Moreno is a senior Business Administration major with a minor in Economics. He was born March, 9th 1996 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. He is the captain of Morningside’s tennis team.






Artist:

Elvis Castro is a senior Biology and Chemistry double major who will be attending the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine this coming fall. His interest in the arts covers a large range of areas from creating Hip-Hop/Rap music to portrait painting.

Full Circle // Marianna Pizzini

            Horse. Sweat. We were running and galloping and everything was going in circles.

            “Tell her to slow down! Pull back on the reins! Mari!” my aunt yelled. Her voice was distant, as if no amount of screaming could get my six-year-old self to control Heidi’s gait.

            I couldn’t figure out how to get her to stop. Heidi kept running, and the saddle felt like it was sliding off. Sixteen hands off the ground, velvety-brown wanted to run wild. Run free. I couldn’t stop. Stop.

            “Whoa! Heidi, stop! Stop!” I said in a small voice. I barely stood above her kneecaps on the ground, so it was no wonder I couldn’t control her. She wasn’t listening, and I couldn’t get my hands to pull the reins and my voice to work at the same time.

            “Hold the horn! The horn!” my aunt yelled. I looked down. How was I supposed to take my hands off the reins and put them on the horn? No way. I had to tell myself to just try; if I didn’t, there was no way I would stay in the saddle. I had to place the worn ends of the reins in my left hand. My fingers were almost too small to grasp them. They were worn from many uses, but that didn’t make them easier to grab. I had to get to the horn. The horn. I looked down again and finally grasped it. It was too slippery, too far out of my reach while I was panicking. I placed the reins back in my hand and tried to wrestle both. Horn or reins, neither were good options.

            “Mari, you need to clasp your legs together! Push your knees into her sides!”

            I couldn’t get my legs to work. My muscles were nothing in comparison to Heidi’s. How was this supposed to work? How was I supposed to stop? I wanted off, but I didn’t want to fly.

            Slipping, sliding, the saddle was unstable under my body. Were the straps giving away? They must have been. I had nowhere to go and nothing to stop me. No one ever tells you what it’s like to fly because it’s abnormal. It’s not supposed to happen. Feet are meant for the ground, so they never prepare you for flight or teach you how to land. Flying, flying. My eyes were squeezed tight, hoping that maybe if I couldn’t see what was happening that I wouldn’t have to feel it either.

            was wrong. I hit with a vigor hard enough to make the world go slow. Dark brown patches of dirt met my dark blue jeans. My head and shoulders flew backward on impact with the solid, ice-cold ground. It stole my heat and my breath.

            Falling came fast but lying on the ground pushed everything into slow motion, first with my lungs gasping for air. In. Out. In.

            Out.

            “Daddy! Please help. Please help me,” I gasped. Mouth open, my back arching, I tried to scream but words only come out as whispers when you can’t breathe enough air. My eyes were still shut, but I forced them open to look up into the thick, unbreathable air.

            My daddy was there. Tall, and strong, he wrapped my back and legs in his arms and picked me off the ground. I was back to being sixteen hands tall, but this time my daddy was holding me, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and squeezed. In. Out. In.

***

            Vegas is full of bright lights and dim lives. Painted smiles wash away after nights of promiscuous labor or throwing away life savings.

            “You never listen. What happened out there today? You did so well yesterday, but you struggled today. You know that, right?”

            “Yes, dad.” I rolled my eyes. I was the one who had bowled. He sat back and groaned when I missed a spare, or he made weird noises when I made a lucky shot. It was embarrassing.

            “You should have moved when I told you to.” That was what he said. He meant it. It seemed like an innocent expression, but what I needed to change was completely opposite of what he said. He thought he knew everything, but when had he ever even bowled?

            “You were wrong.” I could tell that made him angry.

            “Every time I try to help you, you ignore me. You roll your eyes. Why do you do that? Why do you treat me like I’m an idiot?” He had told me to move right because I continued to washout, but I had decided to move back. I looked around at our room in South Point Hotel and Casino. The beige and yellow striped walls seemed bleak. I didn’t know what to tell him. I felt so much anger but there was nothing to be angry about. I mean, he did try to make me feel guilty, and he had never learned what I had learned or done as much as I could, but he only meant well. What was happening to me? Dad was just trying to help. He just wanted me to succeed, so why did that make me want to fight with him?

            This was a fight my rational side didn’t want to start, but my teenage brain wasn’t going to give up.

            “You don’t know everything that I do,” I said.

            My dad stood on the other side of the room from me. His T-shirt hung around his body, rounded tummy offsetting his 5’9’’ height. I knew this was going to spring into another fight; we had been fighting more often lately. I had wrapped myself in my blue and white tie blanket with my right leg curled up under me on the bed. I felt safe there even though I knew my dad, and I wouldn’t end this tonight.

            “You were wrong, okay? Just accept it.”

            “I’m only wrong because you never listen to me!” His eyebrows were knitted together and he had his hand in a fist hanging by his side. His knuckles were white. He would change is hand from fist to running it through his mostly non-existent hair. He was frustrated, and my gut churned as I was looking at him.

            I lowered my head to cover up the tears that were trailing down my face. I bit into my lip. I traced the outline of my left knee as it hung off the bed because it was hurting. My daddy usually helped me ice it, but the dull pain in my knee was nothing compared to how my heart was hurting.

            “You never try anything I suggest, and your attitude is getting worse. Just try it, acknowledge me for once. Please.”

            He wasn’t begging, he was yelling, but it was the type of yelling that if you lowered the volume it would probably lead to tears. The type of yelling that rattled walls and bones, but wasn’t angry. Just desperate. His hands went limp by his sides, and his head was tilted as his mouth tried to stop shaking. I didn’t want to hurt him, but he hadn’t understood what I meant.

***

            I spent my time in my room. I wrapped myself in my cotton comforter and my baby blue walls closed in on me, embraced me. I fell asleep at six PM and slept through dinner. I slept all night just to be alone.

            Lonely.

            Just to see if I could find peace.

***

Facetime
Ashlee Brus // photography

            “Why is he like this, Mom? Why are we always fighting?” I asked. My head was in my hands and my elbows were resting on the dining room table. I was sitting in a dining chair, pushed out just enough that my back arched in order for my elbows to reach. My face was scrunched and my hands were woven deep into my hair. I was trying not to cry.

            “Because you two are exactly the same,” she answered. She stopped putting the dishes away and came to sit next to me. Her thin hand rested on top of my head.

             “I just don’t get it. Ugh, I don’t understand!” I said as my hands flew off my head. They landed palms-up on the dining room table as I stared at my mom, wide-eyed.

            “Your father is a perfectionist,” she said. Her brunette bob swayed as she looked down at my hands. I had surprised her by moving so fast. “He needs everything in his family to look perfect because he wants to always be presentable. He needs to be.”

            “It’s not fair. That’s not possible,” I said. I ran my hand down the crack in the middle of our table. It could separate, and another leaf could be added for more people. The golden tint of the wood mixed with its rough surface-scratches from years of dinners, game nights, and missionary bible studies. There were still newspaper headlines accidentally glued to the top of it in some places from a craft night gone wrong. It wasn’t perfect, but my parents refused to get rid of it. It was a mess, but a familiar one. A single tear rolled down my cheek, meeting the scratches and stains as it fell to the table. “I’m never gonna be perfect, Mom.”

            “I know. None of us will ever be perfect, even Dad. But he doesn’t want this family to fall apart either, and he’s scared that you’re going to leave next year and not look back,” she said. She rubbed her finger in circles on the top of my other still-open palm. I sniffed, trying to hold the floodgates closed.

            “I just don’t want to disappoint him.”

***

            Dinner at my house starts at six o’clock sharp, according to my mom. It’s nothing special, but Mom wants to make sure that we see each other every night. We have specific seats at the dinner table too. Everything is set in stone.

            I changed that. In the middle of my junior year of high school, family dinner started to run longer than normal. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen. I wasn’t trying to change our whole “family dynamic”; I didn’t come home from school one day and decide to pick any fight I could.

            It usually started the same way. We would all sit in our chairs and start eating. The same old question from my dad, “How was your day?” would be met by the same old answer: “Fine.” The same old question of, “How was work?” would be met by my dad’s same old sarcastic answer: “It was just wonderful.”

            I sighed. He was never straightforward about his feelings, and it was aggravating.

            Scratch that: he was always straightforward when he was fighting with me.

            “You don’t understand anything about bowling. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I do,” I said, my fork clattering against my plate as I set it down. The sound was startling, and I looked down at the blue heart-shaped outline in the middle of the white porcelain. I glanced at the clock and then back down at my father’s face. His forehead was red and his cheeks were scrunched around his eyes. I winced.

            We were five minutes late. This was an argument we had multiple times, and I dug my dull fingernails into my thighs as I asked myself why I had to keep picking this fight.

            Ten minutes late. These were the minutes dad fought back.

            “I have watched you compete for eight years. Give me some credit. Sitting behind you and watching you has taught me a little. A lot actually.”

            He was infuriating. It had been close to two years, and we would have the same fight at least once a week. I wanted him to forget about it. He had never been coached. He had never had any class to teach him anything, and he had never competed. I was the one with the coaching certificate, not him, but he still had an ego large enough to bait mine. He had watched my swing and my progression since I was eight, but he didn’t know everything. I wasn’t going to lose to him, not about this.

            Fifteen minutes late.

            “Hey, why don’t you both just see what you have to offer each other? Fighting about it isn’t going to solve anything,” my mom said. She looked between the both of us. I’m sure the almost-hatred was palpable between us. I moved my eyes away from hers, which were drawn up at the corners, and moved them to my dad’s. I raised my eyebrows, baiting him. He stood up and planted his palm on each curved corner of the table.

            He leaned towards me and I instinctively backed away. My spine chilled. This felt different. This fight wasn’t one of fire anymore; Dad was packing ice and he had carved it to a point.

            “We drive you across the state. We fly you across the country to compete. We let your boyfriend drive you around when you don’t want us there,” he said, “even when you would be nowhere without our help. You are ungrateful.”

            His words drew the breath from my lungs. They stung more than any he had said yet, mainly because he was right. My eyes bounced from him and his stance to the table and my fingernails still dug into my thighs, and then the clock. Oh, that minute hand kept moving and I bit my lip when I saw the time.

            Thirty minutes had passed, more than had ever passed before.

            My eyes caught Dad’s movement as he lowered himself into his chair again. His spine compressed and his shoulders collapsed around him. He had wielded a double edge sword and each swing he took at me cut him right back. That was my fault. I pushed him. I pushed him. I don’t think he could have stood even if he wanted to. Maybe this time it was too much for him. Too many minutes past the end of family dinner. Too many harsh words spoken in raised tones. The life was draining out of him, his head bent forward at the neck. Seeing him like that sapped my fight; I crumbled watching as he fell down too. I noticed how much of his hair he had lost over the years. There had always been a bald spot in the middle of his head, but it was more prominent now. My daddy was tired, defeated. He was trying to hold himself together. He was trying to hold me and him together.

            “Sometimes I don’t even believe that you love me,” Dad said. He raised his head to meet my eyes. I watched as he struggled to breathe; he choked out his words through tears. Watching my daddy cry broke me in two. “I give you everything you ask for, but it’s never good enough for you. I don’t know what to do.”

            Thirty-two minutes.

            I sat there for two minutes. My arms went limp. My mind went numb. What I was supposed to say? My daddy didn’t know if I loved him or not. My daddy was supposed to be my hero, and I was supposed to be his princess. But I broke his heart.

            “I do love you, Dad. I promise,” I whispered. Tears began to trail down my face one by one as I watched a waterfall cascade from his eyes. I didn’t want to win anymore.

***

            January 2018 started fiery hot. Under a navy blue Sherpa and a Winnie the Pooh cotton comforter, my fever spiked to 101.8 degrees Fahrenheit. I was sweaty and weak. My head was spinning in circles, like a drunken stupor I didn’t deserve and couldn’t puke my way out of. I hadn’t been home in close to four months, but today home was filled with the flu.

            Dad had just had a full knee replacement surgery and was laid up in bed, so I joined him. My body was broken and so was his. I slept from midnight till two in the afternoon and then from three in the afternoon until seven that evening.  I wrapped myself on the bed next to him and slept restlessly. I didn’t want to get him sick, but I also didn’t want to be alone.

            I woke up with my bangs drenched in sweat. Moving my head any direction tilted the world, but I wanted to see where my dad was and how he was doing. I could hear The Incredible Dr. Pol still playing on the TV as I turned my head to the left and lifted my heavy eyelids.

            “Hi, Daddy.”

            He looked at me and smiled. “Hi, sweetie. How are you feeling?” Such a simple question filled with so much concern. He was the one in excruciating pain, but he wanted to know how I was doing.

            “I think I’m doing better. Thanks,” I said with a small smile. Just a little out of it, I forgot to ask him how he was doing too. I looked at the TV and back to him, sliding my hand into his warm, calloused one. It engulfed mine. Looking at our hands together, I remembered my dad’s favorite story of the day I was born. I was so tiny that I fit into the palms of his hands, and now here we were, eighteen years later, and his hands could still keep me safe.

            I smiled as I drifted back into my sweaty sleep. My daddy was here, and everything would be okay.





Author:

Marianna Pizzini is a sophomore English major who has always found writing to be her passion. She works as a writing consultant and wants to be a professional editor.



Artist:

Ashlee Brus is a freshman at Morningside majoring in Photography. She has a passion for photography and hopes to own her own photo studio after college.

Shards of Diamonds and Rubies on the Ground // Mariah Wills

Sunrise from Diduran Gala Rock
Mitch Keller // photography

            I am fire and fury. I am made of sapphires and grace. I rise in the sky, lifting great velvet wings and scream my defiance at the bloody sun, dripping rubies across my vision. An outcry comes behind me, and I turn, ignoring the tug on my chest indicating something—disconnected. I lower my head and snap ivory teeth defiantly at the tiny army below. The Heathen King had tried to bribe me with gold. I had been naïve. I had trusted him. I could see them now, hacking at my violet mate, scoring furrows of rubies down his amethyst hide. He had stopped struggling long ago.
            A tearing shriek gurgles up my throat. I clench my claws and clasp my wings close to my sides, plummeting towards the ground. In front of me, flickering fires bathe the ruby-red sky. I blink away the shadows of light from it and am satisfied by the screams of men below; the smell of hot metal and burning flesh tingles in my nose. I snap my wings open, but in my rage, I time it wrong and crash to the ground.
            I am tossed—this way and that—rolling around and around. I catch glimpses of myself as I move: a wing here, a taloned foot there, a length of tail. I come to rest curled against a hill almost as large as I am. Rends in my sapphires throb once, and then fade. My eyes unfocus first, and then begin to close. Light filters around me—light that should not be there. The sun is setting. There are rubies in the sky.
            I can feel it now—the wound the Heathen King had given me. It leaks rubies from my breast, soaking the ground in front of me. I suck in a labored breath once, and then hear no more. For a moment, I think it is because my ears have turned off. My eyes close. A general clamor comes from around me, suddenly, and I can’t even find the energy to twitch. I’m so heavy. So tired. Perhaps I should sleep.
            Something feathers against my nose, and, had I been able to, I would have sneezed. My body relaxes. All tension leaves my muscles. And still, the rubies fall. I hear the scrape of metal on metal, and the sickly-sweet smell as the Heathen King approaches. I remember it well. He had come to me on many occasions, promising gold and jewels to me and my mate—if only we would stop eating his cattle. We were well pleased with that—there were other kingdoms. We had been stupid. We had taken the trove. It was heavy. It had weighed us down—slowed our flight.
            We led them straight home.
            Something sharp pricked my nose, and my hearing warped. By now, I had ascertained that my breathing had stopped; that I was probably dying. The smell of the Heathen King, though—that smell revived me enough to hold on.
            “The beast—is dead!” The cry was taken up by the king, carried throughout the ranks. Soon, it was a roar amongst the people.
            I heard their cries; remembered why they were here. I sucked in a small breath. My tail twitched. Through the roar of voices, I thought I heard the Heathen King once more. “Did she just move?”
            Slowly, I forced my eyelids open, and there, in front of my nose, the Heathen King stood, staring at my tail. He was looking in the wrong direction. With a heave, I snapped my head forward, swallowing him in one gulp. I lifted the rest of my neck from the ground with a sucking sound. I saw the rubies, still dripping sluggishly from my breast, and felt steam tickling my nostrils. The humans had gathered around me. At the sight of their king disappearing down my throat, the chanting had died off. I glared—first at the rubies falling to the ground, and then at them; they who had been complacent in this game of their king’s.
            A roar suddenly came from the crowd of humans, and I thrashed, letting loose a roar of my own, allowing the tickle of flames to caress the insides of my cheeks as they made their way out. Half of those still near me died by a lash of my tail. The rest burned. I rose, trembling on limp legs, and unfurled my wings, listening gleefully to the crackle of burning flesh, smelling it on the air.
            I winged away, to a spire not far from where my mate had made his last stand. The joy drained from me as my rubies dripped to the ground below, sizzling on the trees. My chest squeezed, and it had nothing to do with the wound there. I landed in the nest, filled with gold and jewels and wealth—and the shards of something much more precious. I collapsed in the ruins, dripping diamonds onto the bloody remains of my children, weeping for the loss of my breed.

Vualongchua
Shaina Le // digital illustration





Author:

Mariah Wills graduated from Morningside College in 2017 with an English and Spanish major. She is currently working as an ESL Instructor at Iowa Lakes Community College in Spencer, IA.





Artist:

Mitchel T. Keller grew up on a family farm in southwestern North Dakota. He joined the Morningside faculty in Fall 2018 as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics. His photography is frequently inspired by his love of global travel.




Shaina Le is a senior pursuing a major in Art Education with an ESL endorsement. After graduation, she aspires to continue making art for herself and for future students.