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Bluegrass Condo

September 2012…a time I will NEVER forget. Up to that point in my life I lived with my mother, Melissia, in my Pop-Pops blue row home house for years.  I was consistently bouncing between life with my mother in that row home, and my Nan’s Parkwood house with big purple curtains with my  father, Bruce. Melissia had met my now stepfather Ricky, and we moved into Bluegrass Condos in Northeast Philly. Condo number 11 with the white door was the perfect size for 3 people: 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms,  a small box kitchen, and a good size living room with the dining room alongside it.  It was extremely comfortable and I always felt safe.  

Living in the condo, all I could think about is happy memories and how much love the house was filled with. Dull moments NEVER appeared in that condo. I was still young and a newborn was on the way.  Between how outgoing Ricky was and how funny Melissia thought she could be, there were always laughs and jokes flooding the house. It makes me happy to know I had the chance to experience living there and  creating memories. It is now upsetting that I will never be able to go back in time to that period of my  life. 

Me, Melissia, and Ricky… I was 6 moving in, Melissia was 26 and Ricky’s was 29. Melissia became pregnant before we moved in with my first brother Mason. She continued to work through her pregnancy until retiring from bartending at Stadium on Street Road, now called Jimmy’s, before going into labor. Ricky was a project manager, working for Villanova University for many years. I went to school at FitzPatrick Elementary School for kindergarten and first grade while living there. Mason decided to give everyone a Christmas miracle and be born right before our first Christmas in the condo: December 18th, 2012. 

Ricky and Melissia were supportive and always made times fun. Ricky has always felt more of a  positive and stable father figure to me even though my dad had been and is still in the picture. He taught me a lot about who I am as a person and has always pushed and motivated me to want to do better. Comforting me in times of need, he always took me in as his own child even though he  was not with us at birth. Melissia has always been a role model of mine. She has been through all the challenging times with me and taught me what it was like to have a mother figure in my life. Regardless  of how difficult it was to grow up with split parents, she always made it easy for me and supported me in my  choices and whatever I wanted to be. Melissia has never failed me as a mother, regardless of where we  lived growing up, always filling the house with love. Both Ricky and Melissia have taught me what  love and support should feel like without having to ask my whole life. No matter how big or small, the  things they have done helped create a million amazing memories I carry with me to this day, all from the brief time we spent together in the Bluegrass Condo.

Haley Keebler-Lentz is a senior at Franklin Towne Charter High School. This short story was inspired by her personal experience growing up and how it was learning to accept new people into her life at a young age. She now lives with her mom, step father and two brothers in Northeast Philadelphia.

Where Philly Never Falls Apart

10

When the sky started to fall,

it’s not the sirens, but it’s the screams 

that made the call:

Our universe was ripping at its seams. 

It’s not hell that’s broken loose,

but all of life, in just a single breath. 

It’s the universe’s final introduce, 

the final steps, to death.  

9

The walls of the world, 

come tumbling down.

This life’s last minutes unfurled,

in Earth’s every temple and town.  

City Hall’s on fire, 

but not one soul to pity it. 

The water climbs up and higher,

as the ground beneath me split. 

8 

But even then, my feet ran 

over the shaking ground, 

past every dying woman and man,

through the city’s cries in surround. 

Every mother’s plea, a tale I’ll never know. 

And every home, a temporary grave. 

7

I was much too young,

when my heart was 25,

yet with the end among

I’ve grown to be a tall child, unready to die. 

I don’t know if there’s a sky, 

beyond this storm.

This could really be, 

where Philly falls apart. 

6

I breathe once more,

the moment I see you.

Even at the end of time’s score,

There’s only one soul mine belongs to. 

5

Running into your arms again, 

my only home,

I knew right then, 

I’d never let you die alone.

4

You weren’t down for forever,

and we were,

never meant for each other.

…but we face the end

together. 

3

The old song’s words,

“nothing ever lasts forever.”,

But it’s the end of the world,

and we’re starting over.

For it’s not always the end that’s thus.

Because sometimes, the apocalypse is within us.

2

I climb into the dark, for you. 

hoping you’ll wait in the stars, for me.

And into the plunge of light we go,

holding hands so tight, a forever-rope.

1

Because right here, in these two hearts

This is where, Philly never falls apart. 

Samrithaa “H.V.” Vadivelan is a student at Methacton Senior HS, vice president of Lower Providence’s Teen Advisory Board, and director of Zha Literary Arts Magazine. She is also the web admin for Element Literary Arts Magazine, and a certified staff writer for her school newspaper, The Windy Hill. 

Blade

Father returned from the military when I was in grade school. He looked at me with timid disdain that I had never seen him with before, and figured he just had a sad face. He visited for three weeks, during which time he spoke to me twice. The greeting was one. The second time, he came into my bedroom and saw his picture on the nightstand. He was blond and smiling and quite young. “That’s an old picture,” he said woefully, then turned off my lamp and left.

He spent his time huddled in his office, a room which had been locked my whole life. On the last night, before his scheduled return to the military, while Mother was asleep, I, in my pajamas, snuck quietly into the office. The light was off, and I heard a thud atop the desk. I crawled beneath and saw a leather sheath on the carpeted floor. Engraved on the leather were the words “US Army.” Next to the sheath was a shiny, slender knife, with a splendid wooden handle and a black blade. I picked these items up, held them to my chest, and slipped out of the room. I failed to see in the dark the blood on the knife, or Father slumped over on the desk.

*

Lanzano’s Butcher Shop was my first job. I lasted a month. Tony, the old man behind the counter who used to give me a slice of salami every time Mother and I went shopping, effortlessly hacked up whole pigs in an instant, could slice by hand thinner and more precise than any machine. I stocked the shelves, mostly, but wanted to learn the craft. I was a lousy butcher. The little scars on my fingers still show in the right light. I wanted to be the best with knives. I still had the Army knife, but had never told Mother.

*

I committed my first crime with the knife —after Luigi Canaveri, the older kid from the building next door, paid me two hundred forty-four dollars and seventy-two cents out of his pocket —prying open the mailbox for Apartment 2A to steal and bring to Canaveri the large, orange envelope. I didn’t think of it as a crime —that was the way things went in our neighborhood, Canaveri had an influential family, and I was glad to have the money. This wouldn’t make me a monster.

*

I walked Luisa home from the club, still giddy from the music and the fact that she’d agreed to see me, when an older man emerged from the shadows and started yelling at us in Italian. I had seen him before outside of the bar across town. Stepping in front of Luisa, I brandished the knife, cursing at the man, until he reluctantly left. Luisa squealed and threw her arms around me. I had never been happier. I kissed her at the doorstep, and she smiled and ran up the stairs.

*

I married Luisa on the seventh of November, in the church. No one objected; it was a perfect marriage, everyone knew. She didn’t look great in white, and I never looked great in a suit, but it was perfect. She grinned the entire day, and her grandmother, forgetting my name, kissed us both on the cheek. Her grandfather smelled of cologne and cigarettes. Mother, in a green wool dress, held me closely before Luisa and I hopped in the car and left. 

On the road out of the city, another car ran into ours. Luisa screamed. We had to be at the hotel by six. I slammed the door on the way out of the car and told the man this, and told him that I had a wife, still in her wedding dress, that he had made her cry. The man threw up his hands and said he hadn’t meant it. He wrote a check for the repairs and apologized, but I was young and excited and had just gotten married, and when he got back into his car and started to console the toddler in the backseat, I grabbed the knife and slashed his tires, and Luisa and I drove away.

*

As soon as Luisa left, in a huff, to sleep at her mother’s for the night, I pried the knife out from the wooden dinner table. It was stuck in there, and after a while, I decided to leave it and brew some tea before bed. My throat hurt from screaming.

*

I took the knife, sweat clinging to my forehead, separating my hair into vicious strands, and screamed, my throat ripping, and brought the blade down with such ferocity and abhorrence until it sunk into his flesh. Then I brought it up again, and back down into him, and again, until a splatter of his blood burned my eye, and I brushed it aside, and my face was wet with sweat and blood. I screamed again, and lifted his head, and slammed it into the floor, again, again. Luisa’s body still lay, half-dressed, face shocked, on his bed. I had only stabbed her once.

*

In the attic, I took the knife, newly cleaned, and carved her face out of the picture. She was smiling with crimson lips in her teal, two-piece swimsuit, her hair tucked into a modest swim cap of the same color, the bright pastel tones of the Italian coastline surrounding us.

*

Luigi Canaveri was my first visitor, before Mother even. He had gained weight in the past year; he looked like his father, small mustache and all. He held both of my hands across the table and laughed. He was always much more careful with his crimes, and had his father’s men to look after him when he wasn’t.

I never saw my knife again. I would think about it, though, sitting in an evidence locker, rusting, never to be used again, for good or evil. From the military to the suicide to the murder, it didn’t deserve what we had done to it.

Zooey Krezelak is a sophomore at Cheltenham High School in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. She enjoys writing on her own time, has previously submitted to other Philadelphia-based journals, and enjoys reading and writing. She has lived in Pennsylvania for three years.