April 27,2020
by: Jazmine Mangarun
Regretfully, I miss it. How every word twists on a whim and hangs so low in the air. It is a breathtaking sight watching you spin words like silk, like a god forming a quilt with your life embedded in the pictures. I envy the raw emotions that etches itself into my core, how I can only try to replicate it. They represent the hardships you obviously endured, and how easily you put them unto page.
When only your voice reaches, you use it wisely.
I spoke aloud whenever I could so everyone could hear the pain in my voice, the words themselves breathing in new life. Yet you did that with just the ink, and how I feared those phrases would drip off the page and tattoo my very being. I am most influenced by unyielding light, by the fragility that takes ahold of you and becomes glass, so easily broken. How you maintained your grit, with the cigarettes you smoked and joints you rolled.
Everyone in this town, this city has more talent in their clothes than I have in my very body. I envied it all, how people put passion over themselves and continue to thrive in those very ways. I questioned why they remained untainted by their peers, when I began to realize that instead it was the opposite. They allowed for their very selves to meld and mix together, creating new ideas and better beginnings. God I envied those people, I envied my friends. It shakes me, knowing I can write and write with a tenacity that rivals those starving hopefuls but inevitably fall short in the conquest.
Simply put: my writing can’t win. I don’t have the depth of a million lifetimes, nor artistic style to keep someone pulled in. I’m just Jazmine Mangarun, an almost Junior that ran away from New York on a desperate whim to regain a version of myself. I don’t regret running, but I spend my time in the what if. Perhaps if I pushed myself harder I would still be in New York smoking Js in the afternoon with Quinn and Robyn and Eva (even when I don’t like the sheer thought of her) or hanging out with Mario and Lailanni in his two bedroom apartment, drinking tequila with green margarita mix. Would I be in an underground show making out with a girl I just happened to meet and I’m sure I’ve fallen in love with so many times. Would I be finding myself, in ways I can’t in Rutgers? There’s no way to get an answer for this. I just dwell in hopes I made the right decision.
I still see some of these people, not as often as before but I like to think that I’m still a friend of theirs. Rutgers allows a different type of freedom, it’s more constant. I wouldn’t say permanent but it sure doesn’t feel temporary. I can walk the large campus fully as myself, no matter the time of day and it feels so good. It feels like being in New York without the time constraint, and no I don’t mean the hustle and bustle, I mean the ability to breathe.
Angel
By Nicole Andres
i know you’re not an angel.
i know you have your own faults
your tendency to hide from the world
when things get rough
your habit of falling asleep on our calls
because you’ve overworked yourself again
but what word can i use
to describe your voice
other than angelic?
how else can i describe the way you care,
the devastating gentleness of your words;
the way you treat me like porcelain,
when i’ve only ever been treated like
something to use and throw away?
you’re too good for me,
too pure for this world.
and i always wonder:
will i ever deserve you?
i’ve fallen from grace,
and i wouldn’t ever dream
of dragging you down with me
but then you smile at me,
and i start to think that maybe
some risks are worth taking
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