Baby (I’m) Blue

Madura Muraleetharan (11) – STAFF REPORTER

It’s a wonder her eyes are brown when she has lived her entire life in blues. It blurs the corners of her vision and maybe that’s why she wears glasses. Those are pink though. It’s there in the smudged corners of her memory, the colour of her sister’s snot streaked shirt when she would sniff into it. The words flying out of her parents’ mouths would be blazing and red, but she only remembers the cerulean-soaked tune of her sister’s shakey lullabies in her ear. Now, with work-worn eyes, her parents always smile at each other, and her sister lives miles away in a cramped dorm and never texts. read more

Don’t Call My Name

Jin Schofield (9) – STAFF REPORTER

It’s a mild, overcast Monday, and it’s apparent this year that October is not coming to its typical victorious end. The trees that line the cracked-cement road I stroll along are not mid-eruption in a mane of fiery colours as they used to be this time of year. Rather, they are bare, their brittle branches at the mercy of the howling wind. Even the streets seem more empty than they should be – what should be bustling rush-hour traffic is a single car, its noisy engine groaning as it pushes along the vehicle’s crumbling chassis. I finally reach my bus stop – a lonely glass shelter, casting translucent shadows on the yellowing grass. Funny, I don’t remember any shadows being particularly noticeable on Friday. read more

In the Walls

Madura Muraleetharan (11) – STAFF REPORTER

Nobody knows about the bodies in my walls. There are so many of them. Their rotting stench ghosts into and infests my very mind. Some of them are raw, fresh. I can feel their warmth through the layers of insulation, drywall, and paint. Their downtempo heartbeats pulse throughout the whole room. A whimper. A sniff. A final beat. You can practically hear their eyelids latch closed, their eyelashes brushing their cheekbones. read more