Perfect Summer Day

Kerman Sekhon, 2T5 MAM

Bright red hue, 

A solar stew.

Fresh water lake,

Deep and blue.

Paddle’s splash, 

Sails flying past.

Casted hook,

Perfect shoreside book.

No pain,no fear,

No burning rash, 

Just feeling free,

Safe at last

Felt the sun, felt this breeze, 

For the first time in, a quarter century.

Artist Statement:Inspired by a patient’s story, experiencing sunlight for the first time in 25 years after gaining control over a debilitating chronic photosensitive skin condition. This moment captures the delicate freedom of feeling safe in one’s own skin, free from pain, and reconnecting with the simple pleasures of life.

@kermansekhon

“Of Soul and Sorrow”

Rachel Kim, 2T8 WB

Transcendently, I have loved,

Though ephemeral we may be.

A part of thy soul,

Trapped within the soil of thy sorrow—

A mirage in the moonlight,

A trick of the wicked stars.

—Love, transcendent.

—Love, ephemeral.

The world unto itself,

But I, unto mine.

“Of Soul and Sorrow”

Artist’s Statement: A collection of lines from an old short story, reimagined as a poem, to capture the eternal yet fleeting colours of a life, a love, a tale – each treasured beneath the burning light of a single star, and the dying embers of a million more.

Echoes of Yesterday

Nishwara Tarannum, 2T5 WB

The strings of memories from our youth lay hidden,

Like cobwebs in a corner long forgotten.

Once, these strands were strong,

Holding each other, woven into the foundation of who you are. 

Yet, when you look now, they seem to tear at the seams—

Strands falling out. 

Once interwoven meticulously, now a tangled mess, 

One you cannot recognize.

So, you grasp at them,

Trying to knit them into a pattern you once knew.

Yet you are unable to, 

As the fibres of the past unravel between your fingertips. 

The strands of love, youth, and hopeful dreams are torn apart, 

And the memories you once knew 

Echo through time,

Never to be found again.

The Aneurysm

Suhaila Abdelhalim, 2T5 WB

I recently learned that blood can churn.

Clockwise, counterclockwise; ticking and sticking. 

My own vessel - a growing space I cannot fit. 

I recently heard that lungs can grasp. 

Parched and punished, curdling a mass. 

Feeding a space I cannot know, 

until I’m outgrown.  

I trust that they know. 

I trust I will wake up. 

windows

Parsa Razeghi, 2T8 MAM

It is 2:03 a.m.

The pale fluorescent haze

radiates, crawls, inches closer,

diffusing in my room.

My eyes hang, weighing heavily,

distracted by memories of today’s mistakes.

I shut my computer, 

breaking the piercing white being emitted:

A familiar nocturnal loneliness.

Solitude reminds me of my favourite scene.

Today, there are only 8 windows:

they tower over the block,

blinking back,

glowing with faint life –

sonder.

The Kingdom Suites stands 13 floors,

a beige facade with irregularly lit panes.

I wonder if anyone is counting mine –

a stranger?

In an enclosing vignette,

I analyze foreign lives:

idiosyncrasies,

stars and lamplight,

faint shadows dancing behind curtain screens.

A flame is extinguished,

yet just another window in the night –

dreams drift me away alas,

in oblivion,

in peace.

…

A Distant Shore

Brittany Chang-Kit, 2T5 PB

And here we are, 

Sullen little darling;

A fantastical dream of yours,

A mirage even as you splashed

Rain to a parched season.

Did you creep to the edge,

Only to sprint to the bottom?

I know you wanted to taste the sea—

A cup full of brine and sand and specks.

Did you want to bathe in it, too?

Now your skin darkens,

Split ends bleaching, 

As the scorching sun bears down.

You invite her to envelop you,

As you embrace your transformation. 

Beautiful as you are, my love,

Born with a wintery hue,

Now my summer queen.

The ocean in your veins, but starved in your gut;

Freckles over your shoulders and burns on your back.

For the winds have drafted to the northeast,

The tides crashing to a changing rhythm,

Pelicans speckled as they follow their prey.

You are left on the shore, debris in your eyes.

You are a fossil of this once-oasis land.

Your throat sore from the salt;

Sickly, slender frame and blanched exterior.

No longer fit to make snow angels,

As you sit in this wasteland, praying for the seasons,

My ambitious, courageous dear. 

Artist’s statement: The virtue of persistence, the thrill of pursuit, the pain of it all.

Mania, Medication, and Memory

Andy Dongkwun Lee, 2T7 WB

I was entering my first day of junior high school. It was a new school in a new province and I was unsure about making close friends.

I entered my social studies class and sat at the back. Looking to make a friend,  I  spoke with my neighbor. He said his name was Janus.

At first, Janus seemed nice enough. He was talkative and funny, cracking jokes that made me laugh. But as the weeks went on, I noticed he had some...quirks. His moods would swing wildly from being the life of the party to lying on the floor for hours staring up at the ceiling fan.

One day, he came to class with his head shaved completely bald. The next week he had dyed his hair bright green. He started dressing in camouflage pants and trench coats, claiming he was going to join the military after he finished school. A few days later he had taken up guitar and was going to drop out to become a rock star.

I didn't know what to make of Janus' bizarre behavior. He seemed to have a new, overambitious plan every week, pursuing it with intense passion before abandoning it just as quickly.

The other students started calling him "Janitor" behind his back, assuming he was just looking for attention. But I could see there was real anguish and torment behind his eyes. It was like he was being driven by forces beyond his control.

Still, Janus and I remained friends, as I was one of the few who didn't treat him like he was a joke or a freak. On his up days, he was fun to be around—the life of any party with his wild ideas and outgoing personality. Other days, he was paralyzed by lethargy and depression, curled up in bed for days. I tried to be supportive, but I didn't know how to help him. I was just a kid myself, baffled by his rapid mood swings.

As time went on, his mood swings grew more extreme and erratic. One minute he was angrily lashing out at me and the next, he would be flooding me with  apologies . He got into fights at school, arguments with teachers, and repeatedly ran away from home . His grades tanked as he went from being a star student to flunking out. I stuck by him, but it was hard with his behavior pushing me away despite my attempts to understand.

One morning, Janus didn't show up to school. Or the next day. A week went by and there was no sign of him. Rumors started circulating that he had been institutionalized in a psychiatric facility after some sort of manic episode. I was scared but also relieved that he was finally geting the help and treatment he so clearly needed.

A few weeks later, I received a text from Janus  that he was in the hospital. When I visited him, he seemed heavily medicated—groggy and shuffling with a dazed look in his eyes. The vibrant, turbulent person I knew seemed to have been sedated right out of him.

"I don't feel anything anymore," he told me flatly, staring down at his trembling hands. "The sadness is gone, but so is everything else. I'm just...empty."

I felt a lump in my throat, not knowing what to say. My friend was slipping away from me, just in a different way than before. The medications had helped stabilize his mood swings, but at the cost of flattening his entire personality and sense of self in the process. It was like trading one life for another.

Janus was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a condition characterized by dramatic highs and lows in mood. The "highs" of mania brought euphoria and delusional self-confidence to pursue those grandiose whims like being a rock star,but were  inevitably followed by devastating "lows" of depression—a soul-draining void where he could barely summon the energy to get out of bed.

I tried to be there for him as this condition took over his life. His parents put him on a cocktail of medications that blunted the manic highs and depressive lows, but also muted his personality and thoughts. The once brilliant student struggled to focus and  retain information. He seemed forever in a drugged, detached state suspended between the uncontrolled emotional peaks and valleys.

Janus ended up transferring to a specialized school. We texted occasionally over the years, but our lives went down separate paths. His career, attempts at relationships, and  milestone moments of life were constantly derailed by his  constantly changing moods and treatments.

He struggled to find the right combination of medications and personal adjustments that could manage his bipolar episodes without numbing his mind and spirit.

Janus confided in me that he felt tormented—like his true self was being held hostage by this  never ending tug-of-war between bipolar mania and drug-induced numbness.

"I don't know which version of me is authentic anymore.”

Decades later, I got a call that Janus had been found dead in his apartment at age 39. The police suspected suicide, or an accidental overdose on opioids while  trying to self-medicate his internal pain.

It was a tragic story with no clear  solution. There was no way to preserve his passionate spirit without opening the floodgates to crippling mood swings. He had waged this  battle for so long during his brilliant boyhood years, leaving him just a faded shadow by the time we reached adulthood.

As I stood at Janus' gravesite, my heart ached for the loss of my friend.

No one should have to cry out "don't leave me" in that scared, small voice as their authentic self slips away amid the shifting tides of mania and depression.