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Illustration by Kate Steiner and Brooke McCormick

By Sam Needleman Henry Magowan on running an ultra-progressive presidential campaign Henry Magowan, CC ‘22, may have helped run a presidential campaign this year, but his primary claim to fame among Columbia’s micro-body politic might be his audacity to slander the ever-popular senator from Massachusetts—you know, the self-described “capitalist to the bones.” “I strongly believe that Bernie Sanders, when compared to Warren, is the best candidate to beat Trump,” Magowan, CC ‘22, told me on a crisp September day, hands clasped atop a table outside John Jay. We had descended into pure punditry, but we had met to parse Magowan’s role as treasurer for Mike Gravel’s presidential campaign, which he held from March until last month, when the former Alaskan senator threw in the towel. Illustration by Yotam Deree The campaign drew significant attention, especially on Twitter, for its leadership team—four white college students, with campaign manager Henry Ochs, CC ‘22, at the helm—and for its unabashedly progressive platform, which included calls to slice the military budget in half, decriminalize sex work, and “abolish the Senate as we know it.” Magowan told me that his personal workload comprised tasks that presidential campaigns normally outsource, like managing and reporting on budgets. While the rest of his class crammed for final exams, Magowan ran to and from the Bank of America on 107th Street, where the campaign’s finances were based. “I did my job correctly,” he declared, citing the meticulous filings he submitted to the Federal Elections Commission, which are available to the public online. Magowan works hard, but he airs on the side of casual. He seems to bounce across campus, perennially en route to chit-chats, Russian history seminars, and concerts in Brooklyn. He belongs to Columbia’s distinct milieu of latter-day hipsters whose dynasty found its archetype in Ezra Koenig, but he is far more than his ilk’s infamous façade—he’s quick, careful, and impossibly sagacious. The Gravel campaign’s roadmap always pointed toward a debate, where, they hoped, their octogenarian candidate could stir the pot by challenging the establishment incarnate, Joe Biden, on issues that Biden ought to be challenged on. But thanks to the Democratic National Committee’s draconian rulebook—to say nothing of their draconian rule changes—Gravel never made it onstage, despite gaining over 65,000 individual donors. Their plan to assail the kind of lackluster, ersatz progressive policies and mantras that are now de rigeur from Biden to Warren never came to fruition. But the campaign made its mark, and Magowan has not lost faith in young activists’ capacity to shift the Democratic Overton window back to the left, where it will align with just about every other Western democracy. His ethos seems equal parts idealistic revolutionary and pragmatic reformer, if you’re willing to accept that age-old dichotomy. It makes sense, then, that Magowan now supports the candidate who embraces that balance best. “The campaign infrastructure is throwing the weight entirely behind Bernie Sanders in an effort to see him win the nomination,” Magowan said. He paused, then added, with a grin that suggested self-awareness, “Yeah, I’m a Bernie Bro.” The team is also toying with the idea of launching a nonprofit think-tank, probably called the Gravel Institute, with two aims: to fund academic research that will support progressive policies and to create content to counter the unrelentingly popular misinformation zealots on the Right. Predictably, this venture is not going to look like your high school friends’ YouTube diatribes against Ben Shapiro. A case in point came by way of a text the other day. “Had to miss the start of my CC class this morning to jump on a phone call with Snowden’s lawyer,” Magowan wrote. “The call went very well and we’re hoping to find ourselves in Moscow filming with Snowden before too long.”

Administrative hurdles prevent transgender students at Barnard from killing their dead names Recently, Jude Poley (BC ’19), tried to change their name in the SSOL– Columbia’s online system for students’ billing, registration, and personal information–and was met with a variety of complications. After being accepted to Barnard, Poley went through a transition, changing their name and pronouns. Yet, their deadname continued to exist on all official documents, emails, mail, and even their Barnard ID. Although Poley knew they wanted to be identified with their new name and pronouns on Barnard’s campus, when they asked if they could continue to have their deadname be on the letters sent home, Barnard could not comply. Poley had not yet come out to their parents and did not want their parents to see their new name. The registrar office gave Poley an ultimatum: they must choose one identity or the other. So, they were left with two choices. Either be forcibly outed to their parents via college mail or be see their deadname on every document given to them during their time at Barnard. Poley, who has been slowly adjusting to college life, went through a lot of emotional turmoil throughout this process. Illustration by Rea Rustagi “I was pissed and sad and disappointed, because a big part of why I was so excited to leave for college, especially a liberal college in NYC of all places, was the knowledge that I would be able to go by my chosen name instead of having to hear my deadname all the time,” said Poley when asked how they felt about the issue. Poley’s experience is common for many transgender youths across the country. For many who identify as transgender, or anyone in the LGBTQ+ community, coming out to family members can be extremely difficult. There are complications, struggles, and fears that are associated with coming out, meaning that the person coming out must feel ready to do so– not pressured by peers and institutions. Sadly, even at Barnard, students are not given that great of a choice. When the administration was asked to comment on Barnard’s inclusivity to trans youth, Alli Cooke, Associate Director for Media Relations, highlighted Barnard’s new admission policy. In 2015, Barnard decided to change its admission policy to be more accepting of transgender people. Students who identified as female, regardless of their gender at birth, could now be accepted; students who identified as female and transitioned after acceptance could remain in the institution and graduate. Even with these efforts, Barnard still remains inaccessible for people who identify as male, nonbinary, or gender non-conforming at the time of application, regardless of the gender assigned at birth. Moreover, changes to the admission policy have not solved all the issues transgender students face. “I don’t blame the school for a lot of the issues with the system because I know a lot of it boils down to legal problems, but I do blame them for how difficult it is to even get information and how blatantly disorganized they are when it comes to their trans students. I went to the registrar and they told me there was absolutely nothing that could be done because no one even knew that there was a potential solution that could be worked toward,” said Poley. People who identify as anything other than female continuously struggle to seamlessly fit into the student body. Unfortunately, they are forced to face the fact that some people still call a large group of Barnard students “Barnard women.” Yet, even with these struggles, students and faculty put in the effort to welcome and accept these students. “I’ve [taught] at a lot of places, and [Barnard] has been the place where I’ve seen people be the most open about learning about these issues,” said a new professor at Barnard who declined to give a name to The Blue and White. Even though these changes are very recent, the Barnard community has been active in trying to respect and understand people’s gender identities. Growing pains are natural when changes occur in the system and the people at Barnard are doing their best to adjust. “Ultimately, the problem is that this administration touts its ‘inclusivity’ and ‘diversity’ whenever possible, but when one of their ‘diverse’ student’s needs something, it takes way more work and way more unnecessary distress than it should to actually get things done,” said Poley. Fortunately, for the Poley, their professor was able to advocate for them to the administration to help the situation get better. Although Poley is grateful for what the administration was able to do, the problem has not been fully resolved. They believe that the administration still has a long way to go on its path to inclusivity.

Rushing from the voter registration table that she was running, Naava Ellenburg arrives at the Milstein lobby dressed head to toe in patriotic gear, red and blue scrunchies in her hair and wearing a t-shirt that says “In Women We Trust.” . Perhaps more striking than her unapologetic love of country, however, is her beaming positivity and politician-esque ease. Opting to move to the Barnard Lawn, Ellenburg tells me how she is spending her Tuesday, which also happens to be National Voter Registration Day. “I’m supposed to be nonpartisan until 6 p.m today, but I’ll make an exception for you,”’ she says,, explaining her duties as Vice President of ColumbiaVotes“Pessimism doesn’t drive people to the polls in the same way optimism does,” she tells me, explaining how she remains so bubbly after a long day registering people to vote. “This is how we fix the things that are broken.” Optimism seems to be more than just a political technique for Naava, but the spark that has ignited her unconventional path towards success. And with seven-plus years of experience in canvassing, it’s safe to say that Naava is no stranger to the pavement pounding lifestyle it takes to graduate a year early. Naava, however, doesn’t view her decision or the steps she had to take to get here, (including taking a heavy summer course load), as a sacrifice. “I want to be going out and doing things,” she explains, exuding a sense of urgency and excitement. “2020 is a huge year. I wanna be an adult and work in politics already”. Illustration by Lea Broudo Naava’s post-graduation dream is to work for Elizabeth Warren, a campaign in which she is already incredibly involved. Naava is one of the lead student organizers for “Barnard For Warren”, an on-campus group dedicated to garnering support for the Warren campaign both at Columbia University and throughout the greater Morningside Heights community. She is also an active member of “New York City for Warren”, the group responsible for the 20,000 plus people that attended Warren’s speech in Washington Square Park. Fittingly, Naava’s role for the event was to hype up the crowd and keep the famously long Warren selfie line engaged throughout the night. And before I could even ask, Naava assured me that she didn’t leave before getting her selfie. While the dream is to work on the Warren campaign, Naava’s dedication is not to any one candidate, but to restoring the same hope she feels to the American people. “When people ask me, ‘well what if she doesn’t win the primary?’ my response is, ‘well I guess I am doing a senate race,” Naava explains. “At this moment, I have no roots anywhere. Campaigns are powered by young people who are willing to work for not a lot of money, not get a lot of sleep, and who are willing to live in a random state. And right now, I just wanna be working for something I care about.” As the interview neared its end, I began to thank Naava for her time when she interrupted me: “My thanks come from someone saying I’m gonna vote for Elizabeth Warren, or just I’m gonna go out and vote.” This thankless dedication and overwhelming enthusiasm perfectly represents Naava’s atypical approach to college. She doesn’t crave recognition, she craves change, and is not afraid to risk it all to achieve this goal. No matter what campaign Naava is working on or what random state she is living come May, I have no doubt that she will take her boundless positivity with her. I am thankful to have gotten the opportunity to get to know Naava, but if you want to thank Naava for all that she has done for both Columbia and our country, I suggest you go out and vote.

Illustration by Samia Menon

We wouldn’t have Halloween without immigrants. I know that gives some national figures that sit in white houses a heart attack, but my goal is to scare as many people as possible. Capitalist branding has reduced a holy vigil with explicit pagan overtones into a fun children’s holiday where ghouls and demons are less scary than spoiled eggs and root canals. Columbia’s competitiveness makes sleeping with vampires and werewolves a safer prospect than interviewing with high-octane suits and frazzled hairdos. Callous brinkmanship has made hexes and curses as effective as inquiries and midterms. It’s almost as if we don’t need October to scare us anymore (unless it’s an election year, which 2019 is not). So why do we, culturally, place faith in the grim in October? I think it’s a form of escapism. We live in fear 11 other months in the year. We still live in fear in Oc- tober. But those year-long fears are real. No matter how macabre our ketchup-tattered sheets, Frankenstein’s monster is a fictional entity, but unethical scientific or technological advancement gets realer every day. These pages have featured stories that kept their subjects nightmare-ridden for weeks, months on end. How could Freddy Krueger and Hannibal Lecter truly compare to the existential dread of post-graduate employment? Allow me, for a minute, to try. If you can stomach it, behold the October Issue. Crafted by our darkest fears, wrapped in my pseudo-philosoph- ical musing, it may be indeed the most haunted issue of the volume. Abandon all pretenses of hope if you learn how the sickening sausage comes out of the printer and into your cold, unfeeling hands. And if dawn’s rosy fingers return to your bedroom, pray that they stay an hour longer than they have to stay. Oh, and make sure to watch the first episode of our new podcast, Blue Jay. Can’t leave without telling you that.

Illustration by Sahra Denner

Read our original article here, from April 2019. After being postponed in March 2019, the Butler Banner Project will finally launch on October 1st, and will host events for the rest of the semester. Rads Mehta (CC’22) and Gustie Owens (BC’22), two pioneers for the project, have informed The Blue and White that they have taken advantage of the delay, organizing 24 events and workshops all over campus and confirming the attendance of esteemed Columbia faculty, CEOs, and authors. Since speaking to them in March, The Butler Banner Project Committee has gotten the opportunity to collaborate with other resources on campus, such as the Rare Books and Manuscripts sector of Butler Library. The RBML is providing materials previously hidden from the public eye, such as Toni Morrison’sletter to the Publisher of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which criticizes Oompa Loompas as the most offensive thing to grace 20th Century literature, culminating in display cases for each author that is featured on this year’s banner. Other events will also feature previous iterations of the Butler Banner Project, the actual 1989 banner, and a written report from Mr. Nicolhas Murray Butler and other architects of the library discussing which men would be engraved on Butler’s iconic facade. While the banner will be taken down over winter break, the committee hopes that it will inspire conversations and build a consciousness around the Western Canon and how it does or does not reiterate Columbia’s values. In the meantime, you can participate simply by viewing the banner as you walk to class, or discussing it with your peers.

On 112th and Amsterdam lies a Columbia staple. Over the years, Book Culture has become an integral part of most Columbia students’ lives. It’s where a freshman gets their LitHum box set, or the place you know you can rely on for a last minute textbook before an exam. With the Columbia Bookstore’s overpriced textbooks, supplies, and overflow of Pantone 292 merchandise, it’s no surprise that most students will say they prefer the local bookstore to one that lies on Columbia’s campus. As much support as Book Culture may seem to get from the Morningside Heights community, like most small bookstores in America, it has hit peaks in financial struggles this summer. As the chain’s owner, Chris Doeblin, announced in a Facebook post and video on June 24th, its four locations simply cannot compete with big companies like the Columbia Bookstore and their relationship with Barnes and Nobles, warning that they would most likely have to shut down in the months to come. Illustration by Rea Rustagi Since their announcement, Book Culture has received lots of support from the community. People have sent letters to the City Council, Mayor, and State Government officials. They have raised over $100,000 from anonymous pledges. To continue this, Book Culture has created a Community Lending Program– a way for community members to get involved socially or financially in order to promote the future success of Book Culture. While rumors have been floating around that this is just a PR stunt to increase the shop’s revenue, this announcement has brought a very legitimate discussion to the table: local bookstores are simply not supported by communities as much as they need to be. If bookstores can’t stay alive in New York– a city that is often fueled by publications like the New York Times and the New Yorker– what does that mean for the fate of bookstores in more rural areas across the country? —Nicole Kohut Before Beto O’Rourke announced his candidacy for the 2020 Presidential election in March, Columbia students got a preview to his ideas and motives. The Columbia grad appeared on campus early Spring 2019 to speak to a handful of Columbia students, answering questions about politics and policies. He was positively received by the student body, with posts in support of his (at the time) non-existent candidacy swarming all social media platforms. At the same time, these posts and discussions on his potential presidency were created with the knowledge that there was no way O’Rourke would run, as the former United States rep has continuously told the public so. Yet, shortly after his Columbia visit, O’Rourke threw together a campaign. Support from a group of undergraduates might not have been the key factor in pushing O’Rourke to run, but it was probably a confidence boost that couldn’t have hurt. However, his abrupt decision to run definitely shows—there’s no overarching, explicit reason for why he’s running. While he makes thoughtful comments on Medicare and immigration, his campaign doesn’t have any defining features. Additionally, with his muddy position on student loans, it’s interesting that so many Columbia students took and continue to take a great liking to him. Illustration by Sahra Denner Perhaps we swooned over O’Rourke because his strident liberalism in a race against Ted Cruz was refreshing and encouraging, but when he’s up against other democrats, being well spoken just isn’t enough. Columbia students view this candidate through a very particular, insiders lens. We know he had to complete Core requirements just like us, and that his Columbia career started off with a position on the lightweight rowing team. Being a lion makes O’Rourke extremely familiar, maybe even relatable. However, to the rest of the American population, O’Rourke is a candidate without a narrative. —Nicole Kohut On an early August morning, a crosstown quintet met with the sole purpose of determining the best bagel purveyor near Columbia: Wu + Nussbaum, on Broadway and 113th since July, or Absolute Bagels, on Broadway near 108th since Dinkins’s mayoralty. We procured our Wu samples just past 7:00 a.m., then replicated our order at Absolute: one everything bagel with scallion cream cheese, and one egg bagel with plain. We arranged the goods on joined metal tables under Absolute’s harsh lighting, as if they were specimens to scour. Dylan Roston, CC ’22, appeared giddy in the Soviet hospital-esque setting. “The whole point of having bad decor is then you can’t rest on it,” he proclaimed. “Your bagels have to be good!” Illustration by Sahra Denner “I’m not sure Nuss is resting on their JewishAsian fusion decor,” Gustie Owens, Barnard ’22, retorted. “Like, I’m not sure that’s much to rest on.” We avoided a fracas over furnishings by digging in. Francesca Barasch, CC ‘22, who grew up two blocks away, couldn’t be persuaded. “I like Absolute so much better,” she confessed early on, mid-chew, her words tumbling in gobs of schmear. Limp scallions notwithstanding, Owens agreed, and awarded the Absolute staff points for silently vetoing the “toasted” part of our order. When gleaned, this power move provoked perspirant seeds to sprout on one group member’s forehead. But Wu wooed Sophia Cornell, CC ‘20, who had emerged from her summer abode, a kitchen on 109th, to embrace her role as the group’s “diversity—non-Jew—hire.” She praised the Wu everything bagel’s crunchy exterior and potential to cure a hangover. When only wrappings remained, Cornell threatened to return to her fellowship applications. Roston absconded with a bag of Absolutes for his private-equity colleagues. Barasch and Owens lingered to parse prison-abolition praxis. The jury hadn’t delivered a unanimous verdict, or even formed a majority—but why split hairs? Everyone was full.

In this desert, the sky is yellow and Biblical In a small house with an unending yard that lolls into an arid hillside: she hems dresses, skirts, and trousers, careful to interact with her customers only as necessary. In this desert, the sky is yellow and biblical, and the clouds move in the dust of the windows of the house facing hers, while she is distracted by an ant crawling down a crack in the wall. Meanwhile, A moth busts its head against the kitchen window, worked up over the light of a streetlamp it mistakes for the moon and she looks at the dirt under her fingernails— downstairs, her son is getting high while her husband sleeps. When day falls into night, she sleeps in a bedroom stripped of decoration, the exception only of her husband’s paintings: sprawling brown smears mirroring the desert and vineyards surrounding their home, which, when the light fades, will give the impression of dozens of windows leaking the night and the hills into the room. The two never discussed having children (neither had ever consciously wished for children, and their parenting, or lack thereof, betrays it). Yet they were incautious, absentminded, and largely indifferent; and children kept coming. Perhaps their first two, born two and four years before their middle, respectively, used up all the adoration and love they could muster up inside of themselves; and perhaps their last two, twins born three and a half years his junior, used up all the rest of their vitality, and their middle simply tumbled, unseen, into the bare space in between. Perhaps their middle son with the dark eyes that—from the instant he was born— bore up at his parents with an intensity that verged on disdain, frightened the two into detachment. Or perhaps his parents were so ashamed of their apathy, so appalled by their own inability to assemble any endearment for their child, that they could hardly stand to meet his gaping eyes that so resembled their own. Whatever the reason, their middle son grew up unbothered by his parents, and seldom by his siblings, in the shadows of the hills behind his house with the company of the worm lizards and the moorish geckos, the red deer and the boars, the barn owls and the yucca. —Hannah Liberman Untrust You became a shady space, a distraction from a fallen face, a way to think of something different, a place to turn my do’s to didn’t’s, a break from rhyming which I’ve since resumed, a reminder that even weeds once bloomed. Ugly things that should never have been, icy eyes on hidden men. Hands promising to make up for a hurt of wounds disguised with double-edged dirt. A trust given out again and again Thrown so far, I can’t say where it’d been. But it came back, skinny and asking for a mother. And it made me cry to send her to another. But I did and so it went, Crying and dying and waiting to be bent. —Nora May McSorley Walls of a Men’s Room: Word Maze Found Next to a Drawing of Charlie the Tuna, Spokestuna for Starkist Tuna all parties concerned are subject to litigation proceedings pursuant to formal principles of means. these principles include, but are not as yet limited to, the following: private understandings reached between consenting persons or their counsel, a determination of the aforementioned magistrate, or appellation measures introduced by an externally authorized auditor. -Jacob Snyder

The Blue and White continues its short fiction series with a story from a recent graduate from Columbia College. Around the time the second boy I ever had sex with stopped texting me, I was prescribed Adderall. The school psychiatrist said maybe the reason I was so unhappy was because I couldn’t focus. However, instead of using my new hyper attention on the mountains of work piling up on my to-do list, I directed my energy towards that boy. My thoughts turned repetitive and constant and only about him. About him not texting me. About whether or not he would text me. And, most viciously, about the many reasons he wasn’t texting me. On my 19th birthday, I kept refreshing my Facebook timeline to see if he had posted. I ignored the five calls my mom left. “Llamáme,” she would text. I wouldn’t answer. My mother, the school teacher, always attempted to make my mistakes into lessons. Anecdotes I’d share quickly turned into advice so at some point I stopped sharing altogether. However, I tried again when I started freshman year, calling home with stories of the people I’ve met and what I was doing. But I’d still be met mostly with frustration. I’d explain on the phone that no, mom, I haven’t been going on dates because that’s not what people do in college. And no, mom, I don’t know if I feel at home here because I don’t know what’s going on in school. I soon stopped calling. After I got the prescription, the sun began to set at four and I’d swallow another blue pill to feel a spark of energy that my brain was incapable of producing naturally. The soaring buildings that surrounded the campus on Broadway and Amsterdam created shadows that made everything seem colder within them–they sucked up sunlight even faster. While I sat in my dorm hallway far into the early hours of the morning, waiting for the Adderall to come down so I could fall asleep, I would overhear conversations of my peers discussing their achievements as I would be struggling to finish an overdue paper. They would talk about their internship plans and I would search through my murky thoughts as to how to contribute to the conversation. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want me; I couldn’t even form a coherent thought in my head without those blue pills. After my last final, I stepped onto the plane home twenty pounds lighter than when I had arrived. Trapped in my seat for this twelve hour flight from JFK to Honolulu, I went over every single moment of how I screwed up my freshman year. How he had first flashed a smile that was so bright in his dark room during that party in December. How the twinkle lights, strung up along the walls, had reflected onto his face and how his blue eyes would stare at me so intently when he looked down to talk to me. I thought on how I decided to have sex with him even though I knew it was really just sex and nothing more, even though in the cloudy recesses of my mind I wanted it to be more, and I knew I would get attached but I wanted him to want me and the words that I wanted to say — like “I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with this” — were stuck in my throat while I was under him on his Twin XL mattress less than three weeks later. Again, in his darkened room with twinkle lights. And then I remembered my attempts to make plans following that night. And how quickly his responses slowed down until one day they stopped all together. I thought about how I was now bringing back a 2.8 GPA along with my luggage because it was easier for me to analyze our interactions and make a chronology of what went wrong than to focus on my schoolwork. Among my murky thoughts, a resounding piece of logic I played over and over was him being the key to my success in all other fields. Maybe with him I’d finally be happy. His Venmo account showed that he paid a girl named Jess for Sweetgreen twice this week and for a ghost emoji last week. I couldn’t figure out what she looked like because her Instagram was private and she didn’t have a Venmo profile picture. She wasn’t on Facebook. My plane touched down and my mom came to pick me up. That summer it was just me and her in our tiny grey house with six palm trees in the front yard. My dad and my brother had gone to Alabama to care for my sick grandmother, leaving the house with a deafening silence because my parents could no longer argue with each other. It was only broken by the soft noise of our dogs’ tiny paws on the hardwood floors. “Hola! Hola!” Her hair was greyer than before and her eyes tired from long nights grading papers. She was wearing her signature orange shirt, matching her loud accented voice. Her presence was always out of place—a Dominican in Hawai’i, an islander on the wrong island. The day I returned, I slept for 16 hours—held captive under the sheets of my bed attempting to dream away the past year. I decided I’d stay there until all the mistakes and all the missteps and all the people seemed like a dream that I could forget upon waking. I eventually rose to the sound of rain hitting the pavement outside and grey clouds obscuring the mountains. I posted Snapchat stories of the beach, my dogs, and those same towering mountains behind my house to see if he would view them. He didn’t. My mom and I would, for the most part, co-exist in silence in those initial weeks. Apart from occasional conversations on whose turn it was to feed the dogs and what was for dinner, I didn’t want to answer her questions. I would go to the community pool for my shifts as a lifeguard, sometimes taking an Adderall beforehand so my thoughts wouldn’t wander. I didn’t want to think about him anymore. When the notion of returning to school–meaning more work and more mistakes I’d inevitably make–would infiltrate my thoughts, I’d quickly suppress it. I unfollowed him on Instagram in June because I didn’t have the self-control to stop looking at his profile daily. Around midsummer, when the Hawaiian humidity reaches its zenith and time moves slowly, my mother came out of my bathroom with the tiny orange bottle filled with the blue pills. “What is this?” She asked. “I was prescribed it. They think I have ADHD. That’s why I get bad grades.” “You never told me that. But you did so well in high school? Why is this happening now?” “You don’t know how hard it is there.” I snatched the bottle from her hand and walked back to my room. The dogs scratched at my closed door. Three days later, she asked me to come walk our dogs on the beach with her. In one of the classes I had gotten a C in that past year, I learned that twilight is separated into three phases: civil, nautical, and astronomical. By the time we made it to the beach it was civil twilight, a point when the sun just dips below the horizon and the stars creep out. Every moving thing seemed quieter now. The moon reflected on to the soft waves that inched up onto the shore. We sat on a bench next to the tangled naupaka leaves and I could hear nesting birds in the bushes. “You know it’s okay, right? You’re doing more than okay. Do you know that?” She said. I didn’t respond immediately because I didn’t want to initiate a lesson. “Yeah, I know.” I finally answered. It was now nautical twilight and the sky had become so dark that only the wisps of her grey and black hair were visible, swirling with the trade winds. “You’re doing it. That’s all that matters.” She added a beat later: “And I’m proud of you.” My sight adjusted to the black sky of astronomical twilight and I could see the shape of her brown eyes that I had inherited. Mine began to feel heavy with water and I started digging my toes into the sand. That night, I crawled into her bed—my tiny summer body wrapped tightly into hers. These were the moments that I wanted to keep unfolding. A couple weeks later, my taxi from JFK to campus hit at least an hour of traffic. The city was facing a midAugust heatwave when I moved into a sophomore dorm that reeked of weed and BO. I realized that he was living in the same building when we saw each other in the lobby. He quickly looked down at his phone, pretending not to notice me while I stared straight on. I texted my mom, “Todo está bien.” Summer ended, school started, and my attention problems continued. After class, I went into my dorm’s bathroom and felt for the orange bottle with the blue pills. My thumb ran over the container’s top before opening it and swallowing one of them. I had homework that was already late, but maybe I’d go sit on the campus lawns with my friends first.

Illustration by Mwandeyi Kamwendo