Great Lakes Review

BY CARLY SHISLER (Grand Valley State University)

This essay was an honorable mention in the 2017 Narrative Map College Student Writing Contest. 

Kelley hoisted the door open and a ding promptly followed. We peered around the empty shop, the vacancy of other people was unimportant because we felt welcomed into a room with only flowers. The scents met our noses with a cooling effect, almost like when mint Chapstick encounters lips. Our eyes were pleased with the blurred view of different hues coming from every which way. Without focusing in on a specific flower, the room looked like an abstract painting. We were stopped in the doorway taking it all in.

“This place is so cute,” Kelley spoke softly to me as she reached out stroking the petals of this grand, crimson, wonderfully fresh Chrysanthemum.

“I’ve never been to a place like this,” I claimed, sharing my awe. Kelley and I didn’t have much to our lives in Michigan but school and lacrosse. It wasn’t our home. This was the first place in Michigan I felt undoubtedly comfortable and serene.

The silence inhabiting the shop hushed us and forced our other senses. We waded through the aisles admiring the bushels and blobs of color that surrounded us. We took in the gentle scents of lavender, sage, and dirt creating the perfect blend. We took our time admiring the bundles of flowers, no two alike or the same. The stems already cut and the thorns already pricked. The room began to open up as we saw the flowers each individually and instead of them consuming us.

I started to think about Michigan in terms of why I was there and why I hadn’t decided to let go of where I came from. Michigan was completely foreign to me. Walking through those aisles, my mind kept flashing back to my hometown. I saw the downtown lights flooding the street sides as I looked at the ceiling lamps. I noticed some flower cutters on a back table and it took me back to hot sweltering days of poking and prodding the trees in our yard. My mind raced back and forth from my home to this new place, finally calming as another door came into my sight.

I curiously shifted towards the door. Grasping the handle, which felt like a car door in the middle of February, we shuffled through the door and into the chilled room letting the door collapse behind us. It was a long, narrow hallway-type room. Our pupils grew about two sizes bigger and mirrored the wall of colors before me. They weren’t mixed together this time though; the blues were in one place, the reds were bunched together, and the pinks covered their own space too. This was the rose room, filled to the brim and covered wall to wall with fresh roses giving us a sense of tranquility and relinquishing a bit of their purpose to us. We were in a trance. Time stood still.

We weren’t even acknowledging the presence of each other anymore, standing next to one another as if we were ghosts. I began to move forward, planting one foot at a time. Rooted in one place, I noticed a smaller clump of roses. An off-white base, almost cream, topped with a deep red color. The petals were big and full like the in drawings you see of roses. Perfectly imperfect in the way the petals seemed to fit together, like a puzzle. I reached for it touching the smooth stem between my fingers, feeling a chill run up my arm and then down my spine. I held that rose as I continued down the narrow hallway. I felt like Alice, but instead of Wonderland, I was in a room of roses that towered over me. The next rose I grasped was a vibrant, yet subtle yellow rose, and I kept wandering. The room seemed to continue forever. A new flower popping up as soon as I would turn the other way. Each flower represented another tie to this place, another memory for my mind to escape to. Something I desperately wanted away from home.

I ended up with enough roses to fill at least five vases. I could go on to describe each rose individually, as they each seemed to possess their own personality. We walked out the door, flowers in hand and grins extending beyond our faces. Nothing else at that moment mattered. My mind was numb with happiness and was content where it was. There was no curious racing from state to state. In fact, I still have the flowers. A bit duller and shrunk, but perfectly frozen in their state of beauty. I still think about that day every time I look at the roses. An insignificant day in the grand scheme of things, yet still holds power over me. I had found a place that manifested joy in the present rather than force a memory from the past.

Carly Shisler is a student-athlete at Grand Valley State University seeking a degree in Marketing with an Advertising and Public Relations minor. She was born and raised in Naperville, IL and came to Michigan to play lacrosse. She loves to write as a hobby and hopes to continue using writing within her future career. 

BY PATRICIA SCHLUTT  (Aquinas College)

This essay was an honorable mention in the 2017 Narrative Map College Student Writing Contest. 

Setting courses for sailboats taught the boy about scars: the lake was a gouge in the earth, the sailboats left fluid white gashes in the water which healed in moments, red punctures and bruises bloomed across his forearms as he fought to right the masts of boats that overturned on blustering mornings.

In the budding sun, before the sailors arrived, the eastern sky sang with blues and reds. With a push-broom he cleaned the docks, alone, pushing seaweed and goose shit into the water, where it broke through the surface and then disappeared.

During a race once, a sailor dropped his watch into the lake as he rounded a buoy and made his way to the finish. The sailor called across the wind to him, not wanting to cede the race. “My watch fell! Find my watch!” he bellowed toward the crash boat, where the motor idled and the boy watched for wrongdoing or danger. The boy revved over to check. After the water cleared, he could see the watch, beneath the surface, sinking, sinking. There was no way for him to get to it. It was going to make its way to the bottom, where things seldom change or heal, where seaweed undulates and where mysterious creatures click and mutter among the mud and the other lost things which remain forever lost.

Scar #3

It was in the grey shadow of winter that I smoked my first blunt. When Victoria and I walked with friends to the high school to catch a bus, she pulled me aside and shook my hand, passing it to me then. It was at once a satire and a serious event.

An hour later I pulled on my winter boots and walked to the backwoods alone. The sun had split the sky open and the snow was dressed in a sheet of pearly ice, reflecting the light of the afternoon. My fingers fumbled out the old mint tin, opened it, and unclasped the dusky smell of weed and peppermint. There it was: she had even rolled it for me, which was good because I didn’t know how, not then. My toes tapped the ice as I looked up from the tin and the dead pines behind me to the bushes and vines that form the rest of the woods. Birds hummed and chirped from the trees. The sun blazed over snow. I reached out to touch the Great Old Tree which marks the dividing line between Forest Explored and Forest Unexplorable.

The Great Old Tree was my sister’s favorite tree. It was a hearty, fat evergreen with low branches that were easy to climb and nest in. Squirrels pockmarked the boughs with stores of nuts and leafy needles. Its trunk was weighty, grey, lined with black and brown. It is the last tree before the forest is overrun with intertwining bushes and vines too thick to walk through without a machete.

The trunk was surprisingly warm and streaked with lichen. Somewhere far off, a motor gurgled to life. I pulled my fingers back from the bark, extracted the blunt from the tin, and fumbled for my matches. The tiny flame blossomed. If I had looked into that fire, I would have seen my life- tiny, but full and bright- burning there, full of beginnings.

(I was setting myself on fire. And I burned so bright.)

*

Fat old carp circle think that the paper you tear up is bread, so they circle beneath the knoll they stand on. She leans against a tree, he rips little chunks out of the syllabus, balls them up, and chucks them into the lake. It is the last day of class. The sun is high, golden, and hot.

As he throws, he asks about time. “Have you ever thought about our sense of time? We both have a sense of what time is right to move, to speak…” She shifts her weight off the tree, steps out toward the lake. He steps forward, his feet shifting to point toward the library, over the backs of circling carp. After a moment’s pause, he adds, “See? We know without thinking, without speaking, to move. It’s time to adjust.”

She is thinking that she doesn’t want their times to be connected. She already loves somebody. She thinks he does, too.

“I really hope it works out for you:” the chorus of a friendship, then a signature at the bottom of group emails, and finally a note at the bottom of the syllabus he will give to all his students.

Patricia Schlutt is a recent graduate of Aquinas College in Grand Rapids where she studied Community Leadership, Theology, and Writing. She has been published in The Albion Review, The Louisville Review, Hanging Loose Magazine, and the Aquinas College Sampler. She grew up in Michigan, where she fell in love with the forests, beaches, and the rich family history that imbues the landscape around her. In her studies she explored activism, community organizing, immigration, family, religion, whole foods and the intersections between those subjects. She looks forward to a life of continued learning as she travels, works on farms, and writes her way across Michigan and the world.

BY SYDNEY SHANLEY (Grand Valley State University)

This essay was an honorable mention in the 2017 Narrative Map College Student Writing Contest. 

The exterior looked how I felt: dirty red brick, tired neon signs, a dead tree, and a lot of ashtrays. Every time I went, the routine was the same but the faces always changed. A bunch of strangers chainsmoking outside, bonding over bummed cigarettes and borrowed lighters. Huddled together on the most painful metal chairs ever created, there was an an intimacy only possible between two and six o’clock in the morning. It was the stomping ground for self-proclaimed philosophers and recluse savants; my favorites being the sidewalk savior, the socialist hermit, the flighty poet, and the cloaked artist.

One night, about a week into my college career at Grand Valley, it was the usual spread of characters. The flighty poet feverishly sold his views on prostitution to the unfortunate crowd who trapped themselves in one of his political ravings. His unassuming, effeminate demeanor always quickly unraveled in his mania. His fiery locks consuming his glasses. Darting eyes filled with equal parts excitement and desperation.

Listening in, unimpressed, was the socialist hermit. Even in his dilapidated Cubs slippers and stained pajama pants, he held a silent power over all the other pseudo-intellectuals. His best friend, the sidewalk savior, was always too busy trying to convert, pray with, or heal strangers to pay attention to anything but God. Not interested in his almighty powers, I wandered over to the cloaked artist. His small frame was always hidden by a massive pleather, floor-length coat, and I had never heard him speak, so his mystery was either very forced or completely accidental. While asking him to draw me a pinup, a lost-looking, visibly drunk man appeared, moaning loudly of a “bleeding heart.”

The sidewalk savior jumped at the sound of anguish, immediately offering to heal the stranger. After a long debate between the atheists, the spiritualists, and the Catholic, the moaning man seemed to have calmed down, or at least sobered up a little. Exchanging smokes, the Hermit, the Poet, the Moaner, and I began exchanging “what-ifs”: “What if we go to the lookout right now?” “What if we go to the zoo?” “What if we go to the dunes?” At five o’clock in the morning, they all seemed equally absurd, but none of us wanted to split up our newfound alliance of misfits. So like any insane person would, I agreed to drive an hour to the Saugatuck Dunes with three bizarre men I had known for only a few days.

An eager trek to the water instantly turned into an exhausted limp, because climbing up vertical piles of sand is exactly as hard as it sounds. I watched, amazed, as the Moaner and the Poet hopped up the infinitely reaching, eroded facade with ease, each step springing up from the sinking sand as if they defied gravity. In the darkness, I struggled to follow their figures, relying on the bouncing orange glow of a phone light. It hypnotized me, burning into the darkness, cutting through the sharp angles of the impending shadows. As the pair disappeared behind the mound, taking the light with them, I sat on the edge of absolute darkness. It felt like if I took a step I would fall into the abyss, doomed to fall forever towards the water, to watch the waves lap but to never feel them. In an attempt to ground myself in reality, I filled my lungs with the dank lake air. I watched the sand swallow my toes while the reeds tickled my legs, while the outlines of clouds drifted over the soft, omnipresent glow of the moon. I felt totally absorbed, like grains of sand were replacing each cell of my body.

I hazily glanced back towards the orange glow as the Moaner and the Poet emerged from the dunes. We clumsily trickled our way down to the beach. It all felt so vaguely nostalgic, like I had been there in a past life. Bouncing across the wet sand, giggling with the Moaner, chasing after the Poet, it felt like I had found a long-lost family I never knew I lost. Drained, I sat next to the Hermit, who had been oddly silent while the rest of us jabbered and danced in euphoria. I asked if something was wrong, and he replied in one of his cryptic mantras, “I would never want to be anywhere else but where I happen to be.” I saw the same tranquility in his eyes that I felt. The other two joined us, and we let the water wash over our pants. But it was not enough, the water was calling, and we went running. Laughing, screaming, howling, I met the water with glee, and it met me with a splash to the face. Weighed down by my soaked clothes, I had never felt lighter.

I settled into the sand, away from the others, lulled by the ebb and flow of the waves until it matched my heartbeat. In the obscurity of night, amongst the stillness, it resembled a surreal wasteland of a world lost long ago, with us being the only survivors. Expecting devastating loneliness, I was met only with a sense of wholeness. We had conquered the unsuspecting night. And as the sky became flushed with pink, the water bursting with lavender, I knew reality would set in again. In an attempt to hang onto the sweet, somber kiss of night, we all left the beach, gliding over the sand like shadows. When we all came out of our trances, I asked, “Do we exchange information or let fate take over?” and the Moaner reassured me, “I have no doubt that we will find each other again.”

I hoped that the feeling surging through me was being reflected, mending the Moaner’s bleeding heart.

Sydney Shanley is a freshman at Grand Valley State and hasn’t decided a major. She loves the beaches in Michigan because she’s from Fort Wayne, Indiana.

BY APRIL KRAGT (Spring Arbor University)

This is the third place winner in the 2017 Narrative Map College Student Writing Contest. 

As a teenager, I cringed at the idea of staying in Battle Creek. I looked down on the people who grew up in Battle Creek, raised their own families in Battle Creek, and sent their kids to the same schools in Battle Creek. I was determined to be different than all of them. I wasn’t going to get stuck in in this place; instead, I was going to depart for college and leave for good, pile my belongings into my tiny blue Saturn, and fly down I-94, never to look back. Really, the city could burn for all I cared, because in my escape of Battle Creek I thought I left a wasteland. I thought I left the rundown buildings, the pathetic mall, the potholed roads.

But that’s not all I left.

I left the smell of cereal on hot mid-summer days…

My friends and I compete with each other, trying to see who can name what type of cereal Kellogg’s is making. The air is sticky and thick with grainy starch and sickly sweet sugar. The first person to recognize this wonderful scent shouts, “Frosted Flakes!” And then, of course, we all pine for a heaping bowl of the stuff; but mouths watering, the taste of the air will have to do.

I left celebrations of the World’s Longest Breakfast Table…

One wonderful day every summer, I wake up much earlier than a kid on break normally does, and I crawl, half asleep, into my dad’s car. We travel downtown for an event called the World’s Longest Breakfast Table, where the streets are flanked with, well, long breakfast tables. My dad and I are energized by the cool morning and the increasing warmth of the sun. We sip coffee, the caffeine sinking into our veins and into our psyches, filling us with euphoria. We navigate swiftly through dense throngs of people, eyeing all the food. We show the world we are multitasking champions because we can walk through a stuffy crowd while balancing our coffee cups in the crooks of our arms, our hands occupied with flimsy paper bowls of cereal. We stuff ourselves silly with a hearty breakfast, mainly the expensive types of cereals my parents can’t justify buying. For me, that cereal is Krave—you know, those crunchy little nuggets with a gooey inside, the ones that come in only two flavors: chocolate and double chocolate. While I polish off my last few bites and begin delightfully slurping the remaining chocolate milk—the best part of the cereal—Dad chows down on some Reese’s Puffs, shoveling mounds into his mouth faster than I can say, “Let’s get some Pop-Tarts.”

I left hot air balloon festivals…

Every year, Battle Creek becomes a launching pad for hot air balloons and their pilots. There are always balloons like Tony the Tiger, Sugar Bear, Post, and others made up of checkered and striped patterns. It’s a tradition for my dad, brother, and I to get into the car and drive to the balloon launch. We always get there early, eager with anticipation. Sometimes, we even wait an entire hour to see the balloons slowly ascend into the sky. Once they finally launch, we pick a balloon we really like, and we “chase it.” With my dad behind the wheel, we follow Tony the Tiger in the car until it lands. This task is more difficult than it sounds. We often get stuck in traffic or take a wrong turn until our balloon is out of sight. Then, we race down back roads until we find it again. Once our balloon lands—in a park, in a parking lot, in someone’s backyard—we “land” there too. This is my favorite part because I get to meet the pilot, who is basically a celebrity to me. He gives me a card that has a picture of the balloon on it, and he signs it. Before we leave, we help the pilot pack up the balloon. When we get home, I place the card with the rest of the thick stash I keep hidden under my bed.

I left the Festival of Lights…

On frosty winter nights, I trek downtown through the snow with my dad and brother, peering at the lights the city puts up every year. We “ooh” and “aw” at snowmen, reindeer, and geese decked out in reds, blues, and greens. Though my heart is joyful, my little fingers are frozen and my nose is snotty, so we walk to a restaurant called Clara’s on the River and sit inside, gratefully gulping down hot chocolate. The warmth sets in, and my bones are joyful, too. Done for the night, we drive back home for bedtime. My dad tucks me into bed, and I whisper, “See you at the lights.” We always say this to each other. We play this game in which we pretend we visit the Festival of Lights in our dreams; we agree to meet each other at a specific light. The next morning I wake up, and over breakfast he grins and tells me, “I saw you at the snowman light.” Thrilled, I lean closer like I’m sharing top secret information and say, “I saw you there, too!”

These memories continually draw me back to a place I once refused to call home. There’s a reason people use clichés; they’re often true. You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

I left my home.

April Kragt is originally from Battle Creek. She is currently an English major at Spring Arbor University, where she tutors in the Writing Center and has been published in the campus literary journal, the Oak Tree Review. 

BY BENJAMIN KAUFFMAN (Hope College)

This is the second place winner in the 2017 Narrative Map College Student Writing Contest. 

June 12: I’m getting in the car and driving north soon. The road feels like home in a different sort of way than my parent’s house does. It has been good to be with my parents for the summer, but I want to get out of the house. My mother told me it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gotten so drunk and I know that, but you’re not really supposed to say it. It didn’t sit quite right with me so I’m going away for a few days.

June 13: I was far north and there was no traffic on U.S. 131. The forest passed on both sides and the clouds were crisp in the three o’clock light. The birches stood out the way a mother’s first few grey hairs do. Some time later, I saw a trailhead and pulled the car to the side of the road. It was an overgrown damp place and I was glad that it was damp and not anything else. A small stream dug its way through the earth the way canyons are made. It was the sort of place where speaking felt irrelevant. I sat without thinking for the first time in awhile.

June 14: Last night, the wind played in the trees as the sun went down. I thought of when I was a child. There was one tree in our front yard, a maple. On hot days, I would go out and lay in its shade and listen to its leaves brush against one another as the backs of hands brush when almost-lovers walk. One August afternoon, a cousin drew the blade of his new jackknife down the full length of the trunk. It looked like a paper cut does on a thumb. As the tree grew, the cut grew, now a two inch-wide gash. I would lay awake at night, thinking about it. The maple still casts a shadow, but it has lost its sapling innocence. I sometimes pray for it by running my fingers across the torn bark. Some things can’t be undone.

June 16: I walked to the west bluffs per the advice of the bloody mary-making bartender at The Gatehouse. The wind welcomed me and reminded me of a day in August years ago, when the sidewalk was littered with green leaves. Huron was below, crashing. The trees of an unknown island were blue in the distance. The Grand Hotel was beautiful and aptly named and looked like a wonderful place to write. The concierge looked like they do in the movies. People dressed in all white were playing croquet on the lawn. A woman at the door of the hotel had a smile that made me want to turn and smile back. My mother has a laugh that makes you want to laugh along. I used to get upset because it seemed like she loved my friends more than she loved me, but I have since learned how she shows her love.

June 17: I got in the car this morning and drove farther north. The signs I passed spoke for this place.

Welcome to God’s country.

Diesel and smoked fish, exit 337.

Adopt-a-Highway: Hugs and kisses from Papa and Gram Skeans.

One sign told me that Trout Lake was 33 miles away and Paradise was 44 miles away. I found there are two Trout Lakes: a body of water and a small town. I think God lives here, in the back of the only store – the Corner Market. A sign boasted of beer, wine, hard liquor and fresh meat. I went in because $3.50 for a bundle of firewood was cheaper than I could get anywhere else. The woman at the counter told me they were out of firewood and that I could go out back and pick some up for free. Better yet, she said, I could swing by the graveyard on my way out of town and gather it there. I decided the dead might need their wood. I passed the graveyard on my way to Paradise.

Ben Kauffman is studying business and English at Hope College. “Up North” is a place that his family has often visited, and where he has found a peace of his own. This is his first publication.