Silent Spotlight
Preston Graef ‘30
I took this photo because i wanted to express a deeper meaning of concerts. I feel that turning this image black and white feels more emotional and that it actually freezes the image. This photo makes me feel pride in my skills.
Tyler Joseph
The house stands before me, awaiting arrival.
For a second, I was jumping out of my skin.
At the thought of that open door.
But I reach out anyway.
I recall first standing at the door, a box of shoes at my bare feet.
Sitting, still, and small.
My phone whispered in a soft voice.
That it was a box of shoes delivered for free.
Now, black paint stains the crevices of my fingertips.
I can still feel the sweat smearing slowly.
wiping the dye off my neck as I try to choke down my doubt
And reach out,
But my Adam’s apple sins against my will as it bounces.
The door opens to a blank white hall.
Paint peeling off the sides as the path diverges into two.
Left to the Living room,
Where my wife is sprawled across the couch, where our children giggle.
They giggle as loudly as the sun violently beams after the clouds blow past.
Left to the Living room,
Where crosses are stabbed into the walls
Peacocking a standard that I thought I had mastered.
Left to the Living room,
With open windows where I stared at a blank page for hours
And abandoned half-thought-out songs to let them shrivel in the sunlight.
I used to leave my shoes outside.
Drowning in the dirt and grime of the grass
I groaned with each movement taking them off,
Then yelling when I fell through the floor.
I never went Left, because Right was the staircase.
Because I would fall first.
I fell in love with my dark basement, and if my shoes were still on as I came in.
I either threw them off, leaving my shoes outside
To drown alone in the dirt and get lost through the grass.
Or I’d bring the dirt on my soles right downstairs with me.
Going down had always been Right.
Falling face-first down had always been Right.
Being down had always been Right.
My thoughts trail to
The dark corners where the mold grew,
That fashioned into my home.
I would only go left to tear the crosses down.
And kill the neon sign they had become.
To hide them downstairs in a closet with the rest of my skeletons
Each bone mirroring the same pair of shoes I wore.
I wrote on my gravestone every second I was down there.
I wrote melodies about death, and everyone loved it.
I wrote harmonies alluding to my Father, who forgot I was his son.
And everyone loved it.
Loved it, when they watched my shoes get thrown out and forgotten.
The paint mixes with blood, sweat, and tears as I reminisce.
I haven’t gone right or been downstairs in a while.
Ever since my Father came down to Columbus one night and moved in.
I remember trembling as I was holding my shoes with interlocked, pigmented fingers.
My feet were soiled, with soil making its way up past my knees.
My knees were in pain from the grains of dirt piercing my skin on the ground.
My hands were bleeding black as the shoes dirtied me.
Then,
He gave me a new pair of shoes.
He told me that the ‘sun would rise and we will try again’ and to ‘stay alive’.
I listened as I took the shoes.
I opened the closet door, letting him in,
Letting him find the crosses,
Letting him wash my hands clean,
Letting his blood wash me clean,
And walked upstairs.
He grabbed my newly immaculate hands
And waltzed into the left hall with me.
My father didn’t care that I left a drag path of dirt trailing behind me.
He helped me clean it up.
I was brought into the sunlight, with my shoes finally glowing in radiance.
Camille Jackson ‘29'
This piece is a persona poem inspired by the lead singer of Twenty One Pilots, Tyler Joseph. It has a really important message of faith behind it showing you that there is hope found in God. Joseph writes in his songs mainly about his depression and his faith. He is an amazing writer and I aspire to write songs and make music as he does now.