RUBATOSIS (n.) - the sensation of one's own heartbeat
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Editor's Note
Vertigo Editors (2025-26)
Blankets of snow and frosty wind bite into our faces, leaving freckled cheeks flushed with plumes of red. The white path ahead is barely visible, the joints of our fingers stiff while clasped together, and the pumping of blood through a burning heart echoes a staggering rhythm in our ears.
Winter does not arrive quietly. It announces itself in numb toes and aching knuckles, in breaths that bloom and vanish, in skin blushing defiantly against the cold. Yet, within this starkness, warmth persists; carried in the laughter fogging the air and the simple act of staying.
In this issue, we gather pieces that linger in both ache and comfort. These works explore what it means to feel deeply when the world asks us to harden, to glow red with life even as frost creeps us. They remind us that vulnerability, like rubatosis itself, is proof that we are still alive and breathing.
So, dear reader, as frost veils the world and breath turns visible, step into the cold and feel what rises to meet it. What warmth waits beneath your skin, waiting to be seen?
Love, your chillingly charmed editors,
Maddy Chang & Emma Ha
Table of Contents
WRITING
Zihan Lyu – Heartbeat in the Dark
Nicolas Cheng – Our land
Tianlin Liu – Another Heartbeat
Katie Shang – frosting
Avanthika Karthik – metamorphosis
Amira Zait – the graveyard of broken hearts
Alina Feng – Where the Heart Once Lived
Emily Cheah – come, soften and give
Vedanshi Prasad – Winter Man
Chloe Chung – how to: romanticize your life during winter
Maddy Chang – the bruise beneath the bruise beneath the bruise
Caroline Feng – Lost Rhythm
HsuanNing Yang – Gone But Never Forgotten
Sophia Zhang – Alive
Crystal Zhu – Little Brother, or Bran-don, or Bug
Hannah Huang – Blossom
Quincy Wu – The Rotten Ballad
Zenita Yang – It doesn’t snow in San Francisco
Chancie Chou – prepare for winter | a political allegory
Kristy Zhu – abecedarian of squirrel-spirited swan songs sung to the sorrows of a heartbeat
Brianna Su – On a Friday evening, my mother tells me about her regrets
ART
Lucky Wu – Hearts on fire
Ingrid Mehus – The Body Keeps the Score
Sophie Wang – Do You Feel Them?
Torsia Xu – Blood runs gold
Amber Lai – stereo heart
Audrey Tu – A Silent Pulse
Mia Liu – Take it
Lin Tran – Bright Panic
Emma Ha – Dawn in the Woods
Angeline Su – my chest is an empty room
Theresa Xu – Bone and Heartbeat
Jiuxi Chu – Heartbeats
Lorie Wu – Spiderweb