a tale left (un)told
Vedanshi Prasad
drop the stone of worries in still water,
and watch them float away in their own reckoning let your skin hug the sun,
and the soil be your home,
not to grow worry, but hope.
Walk through the rooms we memorized with dread and find them as rooms with light and air, to love the things we couldn’t hold
and listen to our heart, not what we’re told.
There’s a loosening in my chest I ignore, the way branches move,
Silky butter-,
take themselves into the sky where the birds soar. The wind is their guide,
its silence a reassurance
not all paths must follow the yellow brick road.
Pull on the heartstrings
and listen to them stutter.
Hold the clouds in your hands
watch the butterflies, feel them flutter,
until everything quietens.
steep tradition and brew ease,
until silence sings and nothing stings.
Liberosis
Amira Zait
Liberosis
Repetition: the action of repeating something that has already been said or written. Every single day, drive to school, homework, tests, work, work, work, eat, practice, homework, sleep, repeat. Forced into a rhythm of perpetual grinding, relentless work.
Sleep: a normal body process that allows your body and brain to rest. Or lack of thereof, which does the opposite: desisting oneself from rest and experiencing pure exhaustion, collapse.
Exhaustion: a state of extreme physical or mental fatigue. Pushing to the maximum because nothing is ever enough, because your lowest standard is someone’s highest standard; Sisyphus’s eternal punishment, condemned to push a boulder up a hill, but never reaching the top. And all for what?
Purpose: design or intend (something) for a particular use. Were we intended to be used as machines? Coding out our mistakes and rendering ourselves flawless? Is our purpose to have a purpose, to be used for the objectives of others? What machine do we turn?
Purpose: Liberosis.
Liberosis is playing games after tests, getting ice cream on Fridays, running at full speed. Liberosis is laughing until it hurts, jokes, calls, games. Letting free of the barrier of a purpose, because why do we need one? A purpose doesn’t hold a candle to living to the fullest extent. Purpose is being condemned to laugh because your use is to work, yet liberosis is being able to laugh in spite of work.
Liberosis is freedom, chasing a sun that never quite sets, not a boulder that falls. Liberosis is pursuing your dreams, even when they’re shaky, because life will always exceed purpose. Life, sentient, breathing, moving; purpose, grounds, plan, objective.
Liberosis, the pursuit of freedom.