I turned nineteen last Friday, in the wake of Thanksgiving and large displays of gratitude, while driving through downtown Buffalo. I chose to spend the afternoon alone: I wanted to see the small sights of my city—the observation deck of City Hall, the draping willow tree in Delaware Park where I wrote one of my first real poems, the statue of an old-fashioned girl with a shark’s head along the canal, the indie bookstore that I still own a gift card for (my prize from the first poetry contest I won)—without others’ noise. I decided as I drove where I would turn, taking detours past sloping hills filling with snow and streets I imagined as character names.
I love small moments like these more than anything, brief and lovely and distinctly my own. I feel the universe is letting me into a secret, showing me all the slight beauties in the mundane that most overlook, and that even those who do notice will never see exactly the same as I do. Through statues, leaves, and books, through my physical perception of objects, comes a deeper sense of myself and the world beyond me. A body without organs. I started this journal as a way to compile and amplify writing I found well-crafted, pressing, and meaningful, to create a tapestry of small, individual wonders that together build a larger meaning. And while it is true that Body Without Organs has an aesthetic, with many pieces overlapping, synthesizing, or contradicting as if in conversation, I don’t view those intersections as our main work. What brings me the most joy, as I continue to read, edit, solicit, accept, and otherwise interact with submissions, are the little moments in which a piece surprises me. Each sentence, scene, and creator has the power to transport me out of my own body and leave me absolutely floored, stunned, privy to deeper secrets I didn’t know I needed, but definitely did. In the coffee shop near my high school where I first felt compelled to found a literary journal, across from the statue of Padre Pio (patron saint of adolescence) at the local church, this moment of revelation came from Grace Novarr’s recent feature. I published the poems and interview, a continuation of our Fingertips theme, alongside a playlist of “brief and lovely” songs by our blog correspondent Ottavia while drinking hot chocolate on the cafe sofa, not yet knowing where I would drive afterwards. Though I had already read Grace’s words several times while editing, I looked through them again and found new lines to love, other wonders that passed by me before but now left me “exhausted, exhilarated, ecstatic.” I felt immensely grateful for having the platform and community at BWO to publish these works, all our works, any works. We didn’t have a features section last year, or playlists, or even the notion of hiring a blog correspondent. Those elements emerged as we garnered more readers, received more submissions, expanded our focus, aged and grew, beyond what we could have foreseen. They allowed a deeper sense of what it means to read literature, communicate with others, partake in the world, become a body without organs, become Body Without Organs. But, with BWO, I’m aging, too. Nineteen means my last year of teendom, which means my last year with BWO. It was important to me, founding and curating this journal, that it stayed teen-led and teen-focused, without our voices becoming usurped by older writers reflecting on what they believe teendom means or meant to them. That means, shortly, my letting go, though certainly not the end of BWO. I trust that this community can live beyond me, can develop in new directions, can keep providing small treasures that surprise and stun and unsettle. It just won’t include me driving it along anymore. Not yet, though. I still have another year full of teen angst, emotion, experience, and spectacular mundanity. I still have another year full of BWO, including (and especially) writing I don’t see coming. I can still “imagine how this’ll all turn out in the end,” not know for sure, have more hope and possibilities, stop the trees from catching fire and instead sit underneath them, tracing my fingers along the willow branches that extend into the water. I’m still “a warped, bug-eyed child,” a phrase I said aloud in my car, trying to describe how I felt, before I remembered it came from BWO. I caught my eyes in the rearview mirror, and I laughed, the road still ahead of me, a damn good year still ahead of me. Then I opened my windows, turned the volume on my radio to its highest level, and sang “Bad Liar” by Imagine Dragons at the top of my lungs, a song I first heard because of a playlist by our blog correspondent Cate, on repeat until I reached home.
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