by Lemon Pepper They light up the night sky, so bright they would overwhelm the sun if it shined this late at night. There is an amber glow that beams above my head, a glow that makes it seem like it could be day. Only it is a day that just lasts for maybe half a minute. A daylight so beautiful and breathtaking, even Aphrodite herself could not compete. Followed by a sound so loud it would humble the mightiest of lions’ roars. I hear the explosions over and over in the distance and up close. They tune out the loudest of thunderstorms. A sound so full of strength that even though it's hundreds of meters in the sky it still shakes the Earth to its core. It’s beautiful, a once in a lifetime experience, only a select few will ever get to know. It’s a show for the innocent and damaged to watch so they may see that even the most intense measures of violence can be masked by beauty.
It is only ‘till hours later when I see the light that morning brings, that it hits. It is only then when I can see the fallen buildings, and the fallen corpses that rot under bricks. It is only then that I realize that the beauty I had witnessed was a massacre meant to bring suffering and bone-breaking fear. It was then that I grasped that those lions who roared were screams from mothers and their children, from wives whose husbands left to fight, and from family members, whom I will never see again, that the thunder was the echo of buildings crashing to the ground, crushing anyone so unlucky to not escape its grip. It was then, only then, that I perceived that the same thing that happened to the little girl on the bicycle on March 3rd of 2022 just happened to hundreds of others. Would this petty fight for power ever stop or was the Odessa port so much more important than people's lives that more innocents must die. More schools must be demolished. More hospitals must be crippled. All for a little scrap of money and power that would be wasted and stripped away before you could scream “War.” Something so full of empty promises from people who know nothing of what it is like to have your life ripped away in a single blink and yet be somehow powerless to stop it. All you can do is watch as the fireworks of death rain down like the new year and pretend it is something beautiful that only you get to watch, a privilege that was given to you because you just so happen to be one of the few still alive to see it. All so you don't go insane from the death that is slowly engulfing your home, hoping it won't reach you, and if it does, it does so painlessly and quickly. Comments are closed.
|
LRHS Literary Magazine StaffEditor-in-Chief:
Alejandra Jones Senior Editors: Sariah Meeker Lee McCormack (fall) Artistic Editor: Bryson I. White (senior) Instagram Editor: Rania Brown (senior/fall) Editors & Staff: Sophia George Blase Harriss Meaghan Kelly Chloe Meeker Adrian McCall Liliana Palermo Estefania Quintino(spring) Katelyn Ranheim Maria Rodriguez (spring) Mario Rodriguez (spring) Livia Weekley Faculty Advisor: Ms. Sarah White Spring 2024 Table of ContentsArtwork~"Beyond the Storm" by Kennedi Ward
~"Forest at Night" by Richard Bui ~"Dulce Tentasion" (Sweet Temptation)" by Maria Rodriguez ~"High Priestess" by Yamil Hernandez-Santiago ~"Echoes of the Mind" by Estefania Quintino ~"Tigre Real" by Mario Kelecic ~"A Glowy Night" by Richard Bui ~"Modern Musings" by Alejandra Jones ~"Maximum Efficiency Soul" by M.T. Foxtrot Poetry~"Trauma Loop in the Cradle of Life" by M.T. Foxtrot
~"I Am the Daughter of My Father" by Mary Boyce Williamson ~"Devout" by Belladonna ~"Line" by Mary Boyce Williamson ~"Tangled: A Villanelle" by Anonymous ~"The Last Nineteen Trumpets" by Sydney Giles ~"The Dryad and the Woodcutter" by Sariah Meeker ~"Void Awakening" by Zamir Ruck ~"It's Not the Ends, Just the Means" by Liliana Palermo ~"What You See When You See Me" by Kira Steverson ~"Deux ex Machina Moritur in Sola Cordis" by Kam H. ~"A Secret Society" by Sophia George ~"Fine" by Victoria Cook ~"Forgot My Watch" by Deniz Kara ~"Leaves" by Leo Marx ~"Paradox" by Leo Marx ~"The Pit" by Quinn Kelleher ~"The Freedom of a Jellyfish" by Kayla Ruffin-Winn ~"Platonic Nature" by Riley Butler ~"Life Imitates Love" by Claudia Wright ~"Towards Shore" by Caitlyn Kiefer ~"A Lover's Sun" by Anonymous ~"Bloody Halberd" by Zamir Ruck ~"To Know Me is to Know Them" by Reagan Rawls Fiction & Prose~"Fireworks" by Lemon Pepper
~"Twenty-Four Hours" by Lauren Williams ~"Fear" by Tiger Royal ~"A Soldier and a Nurse Share a Smile" by Walker Anderson ~"Mental Photography" by Heaven Robinson ~"Felled Crows" by Meaghan Kelly ~"A Few Thoughts on the Matter of Sign Writing: A Tribute to Creative Writing II" by Sariah Meeker and Benjamin Bradley ~"To Live for the Hope of It All" by Lily Fields ~"Two Sides and One Sun" by Ilya Kalinin Fall 2023 Table of ContentsArtwork~"Jellies" by William Lemaster
~"Mini Landscape" by Richard Bui ~"Leesville Lion" by Bryson White ~"Zuzus bday 4 skool" by Rose Van den Troost ~"A Study in Winter" by Chloe Meeker ~"Les Plaines Liminales et Étranges" by Bryson White ~"Night Sky" by Richard Bui ~"Sunrise" by Elizabeth Cawley Fiction & Prose~"Retribution Through Strife" by Nikholas Svajlenka
~"To a New Frontier" by Nikholas Svajlenka ~The Storm's Echo" by Meaghan Kelly ~"Lines" by Meaghan Kelly Poetry~"Sailor" by Caitlyn Kiefer
~"Walk-on" by Caitlyn Kiefer ~"Connection" by Riley Butler ~"The Sun Rises in the West for it Falls in The East on Many" by Nikholas Svajlenka ~"What if" by Sariah Meeker ~"Dark Cold Alone" by Jeanne Baker ~"Deceiving Heart" by Jayana Russell ~"The Life of a Wave" by Sophia George ~"The Melting Snow" by Sophia George |