Seasonal Depression; the seasonal sickness you wish you could fight off with a day off of work, soup, and DayQuil! Whether you are diagnosed or affected by seasonal depression in anyway, for a large portion of the world Autumn is the season of sad. Autumn is... Autumn is pointing to all the places you’re hurting and having no physical signs of injury so you try to pretend you’re not hurt at all But you still prod your skin daily for an explanation Autumn is looking in the mirror and seeing a waning version of yourself Autumn is having defective patience and rocks in your pockets to keep you grounded Autumn is saying you feel off or you don't feel great so most people keep their distance Autumn is manually breathing and not being able to fix the chill in the wind that bites your face Mirroring the wide smiles of jack o'lanterns but the movement feeling unnatural Feeling like a vampire in the wrong months as you avoid mirrors and daylight Autumn is trying to not make any big life changes even when your brain chants to flee Finding security in the hands that don’t fear that you’re contagious and hold on tight when you feel like a mere fraction of your late summer self

Cover art by the author, "the blitz" Smoke It was four days after the colonoscopy and his head was still swimming. A word spoken into the air with such weight and certainty hit him straight in the forehead as if it were the smoothest stone from the riverbed. Scratching palms on the porch. pipe resting between chapped lips, smoke spelling "fuck you" as it floats into the air. Rocking in a chair with three legs, not four, pulse quickening with the sound of every bird and every mosquito. When the streets keep swirling, its tide pulling in and out, the matter of the mind seems too heavy to be attached. Blinking in quick succession, turning the sky into a stop motion feature film, clouds are chopped up into individual, wispy fragments. A residual gloom cloaking news of a spreading death "I didn't think I'd get that far, He'll say as darkness consummates its passion.

I saw a man standing outside our local funeral home the other day and my heart broke. It was like I was him for a split second. I stared as we drove by, grasping every last detail of him but no one in the car even noticed him. He haunts my writing. https://open.spotify.com/user/sgs2ppq70pq0lbyfft1gbejru?si=-BehtSMlS7ifO196f-GWhw It’s been a week But I was sitting in the backseat And we drove past a funeral home And there was a man standing outside Blankly In black pants a black shirt and a certain numbness about him Made me wonder who he lost? His wife, his child, his brother, his mother? How king had he been standing there? Seconds, minutes, hours? What loss made him so comfortably numb He stood in the heat of a July afternoon in black clothes in front of a funeral home? He wished he could go back And say all the things he wanted to say And he wished it was socially acceptable To scream them to the sky The bright, unforgiving sky Brutality never looked so appealing within clouds Death never looked so peaceful- He looked so tired, so exhausted Like it was him in the coffin instead Like it was him who was just inspected for cause of death Metaphorically, he was A part of him had just been cut open that he will never be able to stick back up His mother never taught him how to sew And now it was too late

This was meant for one of my mentors in life that had created a huge impact on the way I think and perceive my life now. This piece was meant to show my appreciation for his guidance. https://www.instagram.com/jxllxjxx/ https://www.instagram.com/arteikucafe/

I can only understand Arabic. I cannot read it, I cannot write it, I like to say I can speak it but what I really mean is I know how to say "hello" "how are you" and the names of certain fruits. I do not pray or wear a hijab, I wouldn't even know how to pray. Sometimes, it is impossible not to feel like an imposter when I proudly announce I am a Syrian-American woman. Yes, I am the daughter of another. My ancestry is a predictable and sturdy line leading to only one place so why does it feel so wrong to call myself Middle Eastern? I have grown up on an endless list of Mediterranean dishes that I do not know the name of, but their smells are imprinted in my memory. Every corner in my house is littered with evidence of my heritage, I know the look of an evil eye from a mile away but I could not tell you what it means. I am surrounded by family named Wail, Omar, Khadija, and it reminds me I will not know what it is like to be branded with your culture, something so permanent as your name to announce where your ancestors came from. Instead, I am left with the bump on the bridge of my nose, the curls in my hair, the brown in my eyes that are so easily mistaken as Brazilian or another ethnicity in the mixing pot that is not well-known enough to be named, so instead, people lighter than me will take guesses then ask "is that a country?" when I tell them the name of my mother's home. Being a second-generation immigrant is being asked what Syria is like, and replying "I do not know". It is eating Middle Eastern food and not tasting the inauthenticity. It is praying to a god you're not sure you believe in because you might, for just a moment, feel as though at least some part of you is truly Syrian.

This poem is about a relationship that's broken. It talks about the difficulties the two encountered in that relationship and the narrator refers to the other as the enemy. The poet still has faith in their love but needs the partner to be equally committed to their relationship. The enemy wears many faces but this time it came in a form of your infidelity. Broke my heart(left me vulnerable) in the middle of the war... We gave that round to the enemy and watched as it stripped the title off of our relationship, but still.. That didn't kill our love Our imperfections were the enemy in it's truest form. That battle was hard to overcome but we persevered and pulled through that fierce form which made us doubt each other's trust, taking away the one thing keeping this love intact, but still. That didn't tear us apart This war has lasted for longer than just a while; so much so we have lost the purpose of fighting For love was never meant to be fought for; for this long I was hoping the last form would be this distance between us but I've realised that it has brought more men to fight than I had expected. Now it has minions trying to turn us against each other as if we are not one. I'll always fight for our love but the enemy stands undefeated until you take your stand besides me and help me conquer the enemy in all it's forms and save our love.

What headspaces do musicians enter when trying to pursue a discipline? There’s so many aspects; the love for the art form,the desire to create, the ties to sense of self esteem, and burnout/overworking. All these ideas are showed though the insects. https://www.instagram.com/_kjlynch/

https://instagram.com/m_11_rrat?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D

When the world around is flourishing Or perhaps thriving at its best You look at yourself in the only mirror of your house And observe the fading laugh lines around your eyes This is the only way to know that you have grown But not happily You wait for the cat that visits you three times a day And compare his love with those around you Wondering where it mingles together and where it separates I think sometimes the smallest of reasons, like thinking of your cat dying of hunger, makes one survive at the least But other days, you see your father with his sullen face, and sad eyes He doesn't say anything when you wake up in the morning, no attempts at talking You don't either The only distance between you two is not just age but this reminder of how things when left alone for a while learn to accept emptiness as the only normal Your father left you just like your dream He sometimes calls it a mistake and you, reckless The gaps develop like trails of a track expanding and contracting Some days you are there loving him so much that it hurts And other days you hurt because he doesn't Nobody says a word to each other This is how indifference feels like You buy a flower, let it droop under the sun And then ponder over the regret of not watering it enough This is how you become just a child and not daughter As if daughter is an action verb even when you learn it from your mother about being a good one You stare at the world Dancing, drinking, celebrating life as if they know that it is their last chance at making it look like a good one After all, we want to be remembered not like the shadows of our unfulfilled desires but abstractions of everything we were This is how I know I will be forgotten soon enough Like losing one rupee coin and not noticing the change in the weight of wallet This is how I know my father will not remember me as a child But anger Vapours of his colours that I couldn't paint with I get up again thinking that fathers are made that way You grow up in their arms Until you forget to differentiate between rope and embrace And when they set you free ( which they will) You learn to notice how wobbly your feet are This is the only rule of nature You hate your parents until they start hating you back You kill a flower and spend the rest of your life arranging its funeral

Even if the world is calamitous I will continue being my soul’s crafter Even if there are obstacles in my journey, I will face them with a huge laughter Even if everyone chooses to leave, I would be my own forever and after

Preparation, preparing myself for hurt. Destination, doing overtime to be where I want. Exclamation, screaming all my wins. https://thewritingspace.carrd.co/ In the beginning, I didn't even know I had to build a relationship with myself; I always thought I knew myself and that was enough. During the first lockdown is when I suffered the most. I went through a slight depressive episode and developed anxiety. It was never really fear because I was never afraid, but rather I think it was shock that would give me panic attacks. Having a panic attack, for me, always feels like my world is crumbling from the inside out. I start breathing a lot heavier and faster, my vision becomes blurred and, depending on where I am, my ability to hear changes. Sometimes voices are drowned out, or sometimes I can hear all sorts of things. Learning how to deal with them was another step I had to take to better myself. Compared to before, I definitely don't have them as much because I've developed coping mechanisms or, in some cases, eliminated the "fear". But this is not to say that I don't have them every now and then. I can't speak for others, but my physical outlook surely takes a toll on my mental health. So, being in lockdown without being able to get my hair done and my skin looking really bad wasn't helpful at all. I kept telling myself to "wait on it" for the sake of sanity, but day by day it got harder. Facing the same four walls, doing the same things day in day out was getting too repetitive. I think going through this made me more self-dependant because I, for one, couldn't gage whether my issues were serious or not, and I didn't want to face any judgement by whomever I confided in, so I kept my feelings to myself. The trick was to actively confront whatever I was going through and not let those experiences build up inside of me. Doing so only creates more problems down the line. Therefore, I made it a mission to try not to burden other people with my struggles and figure out myself on my own. Obviously, this wasn't exactly the best decision to make, for it made me quite closed off and I became an ignorant friend. This was one of the hardest things for me because I had always tried to be the friend there for those who need me, so when I can't provide? It's difficult. You feel like you're letting people down, even though you weren't obligated to help them in the first place. And this leads to my next point. Due to this, I asked for people to lower their expectations of me, or just not have them at all. I had previously set the bar high for myself, thinking I could attain that goal regardless of the situation. Though it came to a point where I grew tired of going above and beyond for everyone but me. Even though I wanted to depend on myself, I didn't know how. I had to start exploring different ways of release my feelings. At the time, I was also experiencing writer's block and none of my usual methods of consolation were working. So instead of focussing on a project, I made one for myself. I wrote about me. I documented how I was feeling and tried to delve into maybe why, but overall it was a good source of release. Also, kudos to me for making this so well written, because it was easy to flip into a character's perspective and put the writing to use. So much for writer's block. Another source of release for me was poetry, which played a big part in expressing my feelings- It felt like a code. I was saying what needed to be said but it just couldn't be read by the naked eye. My love for poetry came from my love for music. I've never really been one to song write or compose beats, but I can string a few words together, and they always depict what I was going through. I think once I rediscovered my love for music my whole view on life itself changed. Sometimes I undermine the power of music and what it can do for you. Rediscovering music is fun, but rediscovering one of your favourite artists? That's an experience you'll never forget. For me, music isn't just a place I go to when I need to wind down. I get mesmerized by the creation and feel the desire to recreate it because of how it makes me feel. These were methods that really helped me get in touch with myself. While I might've known these aspects of my identity previously, I never really acted on them. Building on yourself only makes you more confident when you're surrounded by others. You have to keep in mind that I didn't plan to rediscover music or become an ignorant friend, I stumbled across it within my search of growth and learnt how to deal with my obstacles along the way.

The first time I fall in love, it is with a magnolia. I love her quietly, behind a diary; I watch her from afar, from below, with a sense of awe. She stands tall, branches thick with flowers, but then she wilts so quickly; just one month and her pink is tinged with brown. By the time I am close enough to see the veins of her leaves she is rotting on the branch, her smell of dying sickly sweet, choking me. Her remnants fall and float atop the water long after she herself is gone. Nonetheless, I follow the decaying pieces, I follow the river, I follow someone who is not there to lead. The second time I fall in love, it is with a dahlia Her love grows with mine, but slowly, so slowly. Worse, she is perennial; for the second time in my life, I wait by the river, I wait for a flower to bloom. One day I pot her, bring her home, and she makes my cats sick. It occurs to me for the very first time that all flowers are poisonous to someone. Both of them still have some roots left in me. When I’m not careful I think there will always be roots here, roots deep within me that mourn. I worry to myself that I will never stop aching, for warm skin in winter, for cold hands in june. At my worst I let strong fingers clutch at my windpipe (better than the memory of lips in the hollow of my throat). At my best I watch my hands press against my chest to fill the place I’d made for a garden.