Endpaper
An Asthmatic Character
“A person should stand up straight, not crooked,” my mother would whisper, referring to both the calligrapher and her creation.
Hannah Endpaper Image
This summer, my job title was “Senior Returning Mountain Cowboy” and my life was absurd in the childhood fantasy way.
No Country for Harvard Men
I felt like I had entered a thick and strange haze. Daily showers made me feel unnaturally clean, and I missed the smooth arc of the sun across the sky. I felt like a space alien walking down a crowded street and making small talk after class.
Goodbye, Beloved
To me, Sethe was the literary embodiment of womanhood — the queenly woman with blood on her hands and a tree scarred into her back. She was the personification of repression and “rememory,” the manifestation of a traumatic past into the present.
To Be Tamed
“The Little Prince” makes me homesick for all the places I’ve been and all the places I have yet to see.
room cover photo
My collage brings to mind precious experiences that I’d have otherwise forgotten. It’s like a library of my life, which challenges the ephemerality that my memories can easily take on.
sam senior hs room
In senior year, Sam's lived with her best friend. They decorated the room by combining their ephemera collections, and the room reached its peak as a vibrantly cozy haven.
sam junior year room
Every square inch of Sam's walls, and even parts of her ceiling, are covered in decorations this year.
Nesting in Ephemera
I sliced up some magazines, printed out a few photos from my camera roll with a sticker printer I’d just received for my birthday, and stuck it all above my bed. The mere presence of color, and the memories each small picture held, felt like a balm — something consistent and bright and mine to return to. With a couple scraps of paper, I’d planted roots.
Anywhere I Go
When you lose the trappings of the familiar, you have no reminder of who you have been, or who you are supposed to be. So being in new places, at least at first, is both terrifying and exhilarating: You get to move a little more freely, losing the weight that expectations and environmental cues hold.
Salt Lake City Temple
It was strange, returning to that personal mecca. It was here that I had made pilgrimages throughout high school and college, where I had implored God for strength and guidance. Now, even as someone unable to enter beyond its foyer, I found myself praying.
