Recreational Life
Work hard, play hard at COSMOS with recreational and evening activities!
Photo by Natalie Farrell
Students were then told to close their eyes and think about what they would like to write, and were encouraged to spend time writing down those words that came to mind and to share them with their peers.
Ellen Forte from Cluster 8 has always enjoyed poems and spoken word, so she was excited to join other COSMOS students in this workshop. “[The workshop] felt like we were in this little bubble of authors and writers and people with stories to share,” Forte said.
Many participants wrote poems about their lives at homes or past experiences that other COSMOS students weren’t a part of, but still were able to relate to.
“The vibe of the room was definitely really comforting and inviting, and it felt like a really safe space for us to go up and share the poems that we wrote—especially since many people wrote more personal and vulnerable pieces,” Cluster 1 student, Phoebe Xu said.
Xu was one of the poets who opted to perform their poems for the group, reading a poem of hers that was inspired by the Taylor Swift song “seven.”
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a letter i'll never send
it seems silly to ask why, when i already know. know because you told me in no less than a paragraph. did you know then? know that i read that text and felt the floor drop from beneath my feet, felt myself suffocate, felt my lips turn blue while there was still oxygen in my lungs. again and again. cried until i couldn’t cry anymore-let my tears stain my cheeks, a visible reminder of my hurt. luca’s right. it does hurt less with every passing day. except. except then i run my fingers along the origami heart you gave to me on our first date. the wound reopens and it’s too late, because the grief slams into me like a tidal wave, knocks me off my feet again, leaves me bruised and battered from all the what ifs, the maybes. the breath that gets stuck in my chest every time i think about you. the thought that maybe, just by some stroke of luck, if things were different, if this, if that, we’d still be together. and then i remember getting your text and i can’t imagine ever doing that again. can’t imagine putting myself through burnt skin and blackened bones just for you to come out unscathed. not again. never again. you ripped out something inside of me with so much violence i couldn’t cauterize the wound in time and even now, it still bleeds sluggishly, staining my chest crimson every time i look in the mirror-no matter how many stitches i place, how many times i wrap white bandages around my breastbone, it doesn’t stop. it’s the afterimage of the pain, the anguish, the hurt that demands to be felt. and yet. despite it all, i can’t tell myself, can’t trust myself that i wouldn’t. wouldn’t do it again, push the sharp knife of memory down, down, down into the depths till i couldn’t feel the hilt in my stomach anymore. wouldn’t let love blossom, wouldn’t let my heart fill up with hope the way a balloon fills up with helium just to give you the dagger, let you sink it into my chest once more. i love you. and that’s perhaps the worst part of it all-there is still love for you buried in my arteries and i’m not sure if i even want to draw it out anymore. see, i wish that you had cheated because then there would be nothing left but col d hate to run through my veins instead of the love that keeps me up at night, the love that begs me to reconsider, the love that leaves a permanent scar that’ll turn white with time.
By Ellen Forte
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leftovers from three summers ago
and oh. i miss you like i don’t know how much it hurts me until tears are streaming down my face. like summer rain, and the lightning storms we used to watch. like black cats and tight hugs and the scent of your shampoo that i never could quite place. like hoodies and teal bracelets and sour patch kids. y’know, i cried for a hour once because i couldn’t stop staring at my phone, finger hovering over the ‘call’ button the entire time. and don’t you remember? i used to call you when i was crying but who am i supposed to call when you’re the one i’m crying over? oh. you told me you loved me, and with every single fragment of myself, i hope you still do. because i love you, and i miss you more than i understand, more than you’ll ever know. tell me what to do. tell me what to do with all of the leftovers, the pieces of you i can never return. your cat’s name, and your favorite color, and the anime you’ve watched so many times you’ve memorized almost every line. tell me what to do with all of it, because it’s slicing me open, and i can only bleed so much.
By Ellen Forte
real love is
oh you think it’s not love, not real love anyways, because we are only friends? you think this isn’t love? do i not miss him when he’s gone; as if i am missing a vital organ, as if i am missing part of myself. is his smile, his real one, when his eyes crinkle at the corners and his cheeks are painted like summer sunsets, is that not the thing that makes me happy beyond belief. do we not sit in silence together comfortably, his head resting on my shoulder, so close i can feel his heartbeat. are we both not weird and honest and joyful with each other. am i not proud of him as if he was my blood. right now he’s on vacation and seeing him glowing in the sun makes me so happy. do we not have a trust that is bone-deep and everlasting, a knowing that we can go days without talking and still pick up right where we left off. knowing if you said, ‘help’, he’d come running as fast as the wind. but it’s love you know. found family always is.
By Ellen Forte
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Dis / join - ed
My dad’s Wernicke and Broca’s Area struggles
to piece together English phonetics [same]
My brain’s limp shuffle snail-slime trailing
trudging my neurons translating Korean. {&}
My mother-tongue: old black-and-white video
jumbled, grainy, silent. Syntax scrambled by sacrifice
a father’s willingness to separate provide for offspring an ocean away Sea of Korean parents hustling herding kids they don’t see virtual parenting; remotely raising up up up away to a Better Life. {&}
Polaroid courtesy of Fuijifilm: bleached pale
snapshot of us. together. two summers ago sky dulling grey face crinkled straws Eyes narrow squinted-shut from the force of our smiles. Eyebrows fading into forehead, nose washing into cheeks. [same]
My brain’s sluggish trawl scraping
rocky seabed catching only cod shameful destruction In its wake: a struggle to remember his face. By Hennah Kim
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Untitled
look at those ants
from up there why are they how do they tolerate the insignificance of their being how could chemicals come together hardwired to be a cog in the hill one of quadrillions 20 to the power of 15 what are we not much at all one of seven no eight billion destroy the world so what? there are quintillions left your mark will be lost with the death of the sun inevitably the molecules that made you you will return to the primordial soup the empty barren world we came from but your existence all of these improbabilities the statistically infinitesimal chance of you being here of those ants being here the clump of electrical carbon that cobbled itself together to create you to give you life thats reason enough to live it is it not? By Kyan Wang
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