3. Comb Jellies

  Come Out of that dark water The drawing above was made in the throes of gender dysphoria when I was convinced that I would never look into a mirror and see myself. I find it funny that it was sort of realized now. Narcissus reborn, the bathroom is the new river-pool To skinny dip in. She looked over the river’s edge and saw  The careful form of a wonderful stranger And Realized in the warmth of the light  He longs to come out of that dark water. Reaching out from depth and drowning Artist kisses the hand of the muse in the river. Eyes tracing color and body arch Searching for what makes the masculine,  Eyes dark as the earth flowering open Golden core.  He longs to come out of that dark water. His skin is soft roasted, cocoa powder  Orange undertone Bending into green with the light-angle like the serpent Beckoning Eve. The fruit is the apple is the knowledge, It is the freedom and the first sin Was discovery upon podium of open lips: Speak your truth swe...

  Change is to take a cold shower. To change, one must do what they are not comfortable doing.  One must enter the door of uncertainty to exit out to a more certain one. One must take a cold shower. Each drop of water—sharper than the last—feels like a dagger, But after death comes peace (I hope). As the water barrages my skin, I feel numb, yet I feel empowered. From the top of my scalp to the edge of my toes(which are always out), I feel frozen, but there’s a fire igniting inside. The strength transcends to my pupils, which now see clear, like holy water (although I'm not particularly religious).  But it is not just the physical state. Similar to vision, one is also given clarity in the mind (which is lowkey more important in today's world). The distractions vaporize—parrallel to the unrequired hot water. My unnecessary thoughts embody the fog of dry ice—drifting away into space. But what remains is the truth—always put to light in times of vulnerability. But to be comfo...

In 1995, an 18-year-old girl in Vellore, Tamilnadu got invited to be a part of a program. This program allowed first-year college students to transfer to a government college for 2 years with the promise of being able to attend Anna University (one of the top colleges in South India) for the remainder of their college years. The girl accepted this program and transferred to the government school 2 months into her first year of college.  3 months later, she met a 3rd year college student from Coimbatore, Tamilnadu (a city about 250 miles from Vellore). He dared her to put a ping pong ball under the school bus (she refused) so she instead bought him a coffee from the coffee stall across the street from their campus.  They got to know each other and eventually, he asked her to marry him. She said no. He asked again. She said no. And then he asked one more time and she finally agreed. (To be fair, she didn’t say no because she didn’t like him; she was worried about what her family...

  My friend “MB” and I had a conversation about AI after I mentioned my old addiction using an AI chatbot. I mention this because this is the main root for my current and enduring hate for AI. Back in middle school, I was completely hypnotized by the immediate answers to stupid questions about fictional stories, character hypotheticals, etc. I have never used it for academic purposes--rather shamefully, it was for fandom. I make this clear to provide the emotional context for this conversation. I thought our talk was interesting enough to share. This is heavily paraphrased and cut due to our actual conversation being four hours long.  L: You told me you were shocked to see a lot of our fellow students readily lean on AI to do homework, specifically humanities/English homework. Can you elaborate on that?  MB:  A lot of people in my Chem class are using ChatGPT (pronounced “chat-goopt”) to “brainstorm” for their English assignments. I just think it’s stupid. You can’t ...

As we delve further into the school year, tests and quizzes come and go. Certain students will maintain a stoic quality as they push through their days, ignorant of the daily reviewing they should be doing for the college-level courses they are taking on a couple years too early. And in ignoring the concept of studying for an assessment before the night before the test, such students will realize that they are utterly unprepared. Helpless. Kids will so casually choose to not study, prioritizing other matters over the mundanity of review, in such a steadfast and determined manner too! They would rather gouge their eyes out with spoons than crack open a textbook or peek at Collegeboard practice material; they maintain the hardiness and courage of a Greek spartan as they deny the looming threat of a test pummeling their grade.  And thus—carrying this identity of a bold soldier against the barrage of test reminders hurled their way—students will undergo an extreme metamorphosis when th...

 Today in class, we talked about American Identity; what people see as an American identity, and that got me thinking about how being American works. According to my tablemates, the American identity is freedom and anyone who lives in America is American. But what about the immigrants? How does being born in one place and being raised in antoher affect American identity? Discussing this in class was a weird experience, especially because I’m not actually a U.S. citizen like the rest of my peers. On official records, I’m an immigrant. I have a green card I had to renew in February, I have an alien registration number, I have hospital records showing I was born in Singapore. Legally and by blood, I’m Singaporean through and through. My mom and dad were born in Singapore and grew up in Singapore and only came here around a year after I was born. But what does that mean when you know nothing about being Singaporean? My mom sometimes talks to me about Singapore. She talks about th...

...because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." To a select few cultured individuals, these words ring a familiar bell—they are among the opening words of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden , an account of solitary living in the wilderness that has, among other things, served as the motto of American High School’s Dead Poets Society. Thoreau reminds us to confront the basic aspects of life, casting away our premonitions about man-made society and civilization. It is these simple words that prove the most difficult to hear. As juniors in high school, this year is a grand, chaotic cacophony—AP classes, clubs, practices, employment, internships, college applications…and more. We step into a world where we are no longer seen as children, with all the time in the world; now, we are adults in training, and we better start acting like it immediate...