{"id":1200,"date":"2023-06-15T15:50:15","date_gmt":"2023-06-15T22:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2023-06-15T15:57:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-15T22:57:34","slug":"usc-dornsife-magazine-2023-creative-writing-contest-runners-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/usc-dornsife-magazine-2023-creative-writing-contest-runners-up\/","title":{"rendered":"USC Dornsife Magazine 2023 Creative Writing Contest: Runners-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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USC Dornsife Magazine 2023 Creative Writing Contest: Runners-Up<\/h1>\n

JOINT SECOND PLACE<\/h2>\n

We Are Our Mountains<\/strong>
\nBy Ani Grigorian (B.A., biological sciences and English, \u201999)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here in this stretched out black
\nand white corridor reminiscent of an Escher print
\nwe bump into each other<\/p>\n

I ask, \u201cWhen is enough enough?\u201d
\nIs the fifth time we lost
\n<\/em>power since December enough?!<\/em><\/p>\n

While civilian infrastructures supply hope
\ngas electricity internet
\nthis sole cold winter has other plans<\/p>\n

Precipitation from a dark puffy cloud
\nwakes up even our ancestors<\/p>\n

A dusty Hollywood winged ceiling light
\ngrins on, frowns off<\/p>\n

According to the foreign ministry
\nconditions are critical<\/p>\n

We are freezing now
\nnow the freezer isn\u2019t freezing
\nwe are down to the last piece of lavash<\/p>\n

Sympathy is trickling through
\na single pipeline hardly
\nconsoling loss<\/p>\n

We are closer than ever now
\nnow we don\u2019t speak much
\nwe conserve the light within<\/p>\n

Once upon a time
\nan energy crisis was dooming<\/p>\n

We were all alone together
\nwith our mountains<\/p>\n

You in a statuesque gaze at the window
\nI reading you poems.<\/p>\n

JOINT SECOND PLACE<\/h2>\n

Sabrina and the Fig<\/strong>
\nBy Paul Liu (B.A., English, \u201924)<\/strong><\/p>\n

That night, the sky was dim but it held quietly over us like a fermata. We had walked to our old<\/p>\n

elementary school, talking softly through masks about the way people grow up, losing friends and losing love. We both felt young and old. It was June and the school was deserted. Orange traffic cones sat upright in basketball hoops, reminding me of how people were dying around us and we couldn\u2019t understand how to grieve in so much aloneness. I remember how curious you were about those cones, its symbolism, maybe. You snapped a picture.<\/p>\n

We walked past the classrooms to the mural outside the library. A low breeze blew through<\/p>\n

your bangs, splashing us with the faint smell of the blacktop. We were looking for our flowers, the ones we had painted when we were still children, still strangers. I didn\u2019t know what to look for \u2014 what were the colors of my childhood? But you insisted, they\u2019re here, Paul, our flowers with smiley faces.<\/p>\n

And perhaps they were, at least for a while as we swung on the monkey bars that were too small<\/p>\n

for our hands. And maybe they were still there, as we sat on the cement steps, answering questions with questions, giggling.<\/p>\n

That night, outside my house, I picked a fig from the tree and gave it to you. You smiled with<\/p>\n

full cheeks. Laughing, you said, of course you have a fig tree, Paul! Did you know, Sabrina, that a fig is a flower?<\/p>\n

A year later, I was in Los Angeles and you were on the other side of the country. We broke up<\/p>\n

with our partners. It was the year we were busy trying to outrun our loneliness. In one of my classes, we read the Levis poem you recited for me once, on your lawn: \u201call we are \/ Is the design or insignia that misrepresents what we are, & stays \/ Behind.\u201d I snapped a picture and sent it to you.<\/p>\n

That winter, my artist roommate told me about how figs grow. The process begins with a<\/p>\n

female fig wasp. It will crawl through a tiny hole to the inside of the fig where it lays its eggs and<\/p>\n

pollinates the flowers. After all of this, the female wasp dies and the fig digests it. I thought of you then, wondered if you knew about all this, and tried to imagine what you would say if you hadn\u2019t. That\u2019s a beautiful kind of wholeness or do you think we would be figs or wasps?<\/p>\n

The last time I saw you, we were trying hard to be happy. So many people had died. Most of<\/p>\n

them we didn’t know. The world seemed small and cold. But we still smiled. And I remember you asked me, through the sweetest laugh, if I felt broken. I would have liked to have said something about the fig\u2014how something inside had died, but we were absorbing it, growing into a sense of fullness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n \n \n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\n\n \n
\n \n
\n\n \n

\n First Place Winner\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n
\n \n
\n\n \n

\n Wet Season<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/article>\n <\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-creative-writing-content"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUSC Dornsife Magazine 2023 Creative Writing Contest: Runners-Up<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/usc-dornsife-magazine-2023-creative-writing-contest-runners-up\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"USC Dornsife Magazine 2023 Creative Writing Contest: Runners-Up - 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