The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
Cover the Earth, It Feels Cold by Catalina Cano
It started off as something insignificant, really. Different ideologies arose like the sun, as the delicate slopes of our surrounding hills bared witness of people becoming sunflowers. Dark faces began to follow the same deity in the sky, but like racehorses they became unable to look to their sides and realize they were against one another while standing on the same field. I must’ve been in love with Jude, I realize that now. Ice can melt; the sun is warm; I was in love. It has dawned on me now, that half of us saw their white robes as a joke while the other half pretended to play along just to safely get away with their own intentions.
Jude was never imposing, and that was motive enough for me to contain my ever-growing desire to stop him from following them. Today we stand on a country torn in two. Though the people in power would like for you to believe we split peacefully, those of us who lived through the separation know that our own hands firmly held the knife with which we cut off our own fingertips. The bleeding never clogged. It started off as a joke, but even within the tiniest, humorless joke you can find, shines a glimpse of truth. Jude and I shared our goodbyes over a steaming cup of coffee and then I watched him go, with nothing but his own two hands to hold. I realized he was following them after he sneaked his worn out but reliable handkerchief into my hands. I always miss him.
I was swimming in the depths of ongoing thoughts when Willa walked into the kitchen, clutching tightly the newspaper in her left hand. I watched her approach the stove where one of the burners kept the freshly brewed tea warm.
“Have you had some tea already?” she asked, steadily pouring herself some with her free right hand.
“Dad made us some earlier today, thanks.”
I watched my sister lower herself to the chair next to me, placing the folded newspaper on the table. She sipped her tea quietly, with saint-like patience, often bringing a pleasant contrast to the rest of us, rapidly slurping individuals. Noon was drawing near, the air growing hotter and thicker. I turned my head to listen to the songbirds that always sought shelter from the scalding sun on the branches of the evergreen pine trees until the clinking sound of the coffee cup drew my attention back to Willa.
“You should give this a look,” she said, pushing the newspaper into my hands. “We can´t be certain whether this is true or not, things can be manipulated after all, but things seem to be going South for the Easterners.”
The Righteous Will Partake of the Bread and Drink the Water: Mass Suicide on the East. The large font lacked impact compared to what really took away the reader’s attention. Underneath the headlines was a picture that deemed all words insignificant for it could speak for itself. It had most likely been taken from above, with one of the flying eyes that had spread around pandemically: drones. Had the picture been taken from higher altitude, the corpses lying on the plain green field would’ve been nothing but a white spot. Perhaps a long white gazebo or a giant bedsheet that someone threw on the ground just because, someone who thought the earth beneath might catch a cold. I said nothing, for there was nothing to say. Instead I stood and set a pot filled with water to boil. I craved a cup of coffee.
