Winter 2018
VOLUME 6 ISSUE 1
ap·er·ture
n. a space through which light passes in an optical or photographic instrument, especially the variable opening by which light enters a camera.
Photography by Lindsay Nelson (‘18)
Foreword
To write someone into existence is to take all one is, who one has loved, how one has chosen to love, and spin it into something new.
How to separate truth from nostalgia?—that is a question we have attempted to answer for as long as time itself. In my heart of hearts, I know there will always be that counter. There will always be clouds on a sunny day, dead leaves during the gorgeous autumn. Nature is inherently selfish in that way, how it gives so much light yet exposes the shadows of mortality. Every time I write a simple verse, I have to ask myself if I am writing about the people I know or the foggy specters of the people I want to remember. Yet we all know the truth: those recollections grow a little weaker with each passing day. The people we were even months ago have been gone for a long time, and writing them out can only bring back half of our lives back then. That does not diminish the brilliant nature of the memories, it simply repaints them in a more obscure hue. But I'll try. For him, for her, for them, I will try. We haven't spoken in years, but through these verses I will try to preserve parts of the world and nature we wove in that old schoolyard—and someday, the world that arose from a burst of blue and gold on the bleachers, too.
So that if one day someone stumbles upon these words—or if, perchance, they stumble upon this anthology—the whole world will know we haven't forgotten. No, we remember everything. The ebullience of the sun on our middle school cheeks to the dark shadow encroaching as days got shorter, we will not forget. How to separate truth from nostalgia, light from dark—that is a question we have attempted to answer for as long as time itself.
These words are our answer.
— Katelin Tharp