BrainScramble Magazine. The world through our eyes. Toronto & Berkeley. Latest BSToronto i17: MEND, out now.
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My Love in Comparison: A Call to Keep Lesbians Loving
In 2023, I wrote My Love in Comparison: A Critique On Modern Love. I wrote this piece out of desperation. It was a gasp for air as I felt myself drowning in the expectations and critiques of others, my head bobbing out of water enough times to profess my undying love for the way I…
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Small hands walk in.
My little room at the end of the hall. It is a home converted into a piano studio. Small hands walk in held by tiny bodies, their mothers’ sweet perfume, jagged bangs, crooked glasses, baby teeth, and high pitched laughter. I look at memories from the vault that I forgot were already stored in my…
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alone together
Sorrow’s fingertips shush the last warm light and the twilight shines pale again. the breathing next to me doesn’t cease. though, i guess mine doesn’t either. i suppose that’s what we call a win.
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Anatomy of a Flowerless Vase
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Alternating Realities
“What separates the reality in our minds from the reality outside ourselves? Is there really a difference?”
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Ready-Lights, Action
I can be described as 3 stages: the first is blinding, the floorboards reflecting off the cold, white light. Every inch of the stage is visible—you can see the pieces of masking tape on the ground for the various set designs, the layers of paint flaking off the back wall. Every wire of the lights,…
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Papier Monsters
1 There are two kinds of monsters, and there are two kinds of days you learn what they are. There are closet monsters. There are under-the-bed monsters. There are outside-in-the-dark monsters. These monsters occupy one kind of space of time of danger. These monsters are unfamiliar. Molds of your childish over-imagination. Borrowed nightmares. These are…
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4 Times Dylan O’Brien Saved My Life and 1 Time He Didn’t
Werewolves, masks, and my digital footprint
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Purdah
Edited by Alloe Mak The Rorschach blots beneath my sleeves: two white swans streaming down this tunnel of love— or an iron waterfall staved off by pills below— or a bated-breath virgin, winning the war but losing her last name. Left unsaid: I’m betrothed to my mother’s walls of calligraphy, yet I love best alone.…
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liar, liar
Edited by Alloe Mak If you met me between the ages of eight and twelve, you might’ve thought I had a brother, and you would think so because I would have told you as much. I wanted an older brother badly—one who would tease me and get upset when boys were mean to me, so…
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And Still, the Goldenrod Pushes up Through Slats of Fir.
Edited by Alloe Mak PROLOGUE: Enter THE PLAYWRIGHT, there she is again, at a desk, at a stage, lingering in the doorway of a Room that does not know her, a room she does not know. There she is, peering out from behind a deep red velvet curtain into the dark of an empty stage,…
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Choose Passionately and Badly
Edited by Alloe Mak “Twenty years of subtle self-indulgence, self-denial; until the subject thinks herself a queen & yet a beggar – both at the same time. She must doubt herself in everything but love. She must choose passionately & badly. She must feel lost as a dog without her master. She must refer all…
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HOW TO BE GOD
Edited by Alloe Mak The face is always the most difficult to sculpt. Some say it’s because it’s too personal—too intimate. Eyes mirroring souls. They say a non-human individual could never truly sculpt a face worthy of breathing, blinking, or seeing, because the fingers that slide across their craggy flesh are smooth. They are unbeaten,…
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Lucky Number 16
Edited by Alloe Mak Content Warning: Suicidal Ideation My therapist says that “I didn’t think I’d be alive this long” is something she hears a lot these days. As I rapidly approach my 20th birthday, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to still be alive. At the peak of my…
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running out of words to write
Running out of words to write. Running from the stage, from the spotlight. I know the masquerade that writers do. I’ve torn it off and bared my soul, scarred and misshapen as it is, then I’ve smiled when people clapped like writers do, seen through the haze of a multitude of gazes. What is intimacy?…
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funeral
Edited by Alloe Mak Slipping into my best black and white, clashing thoughts drift in spite. I stand alone in attendance, fulfilling our tasks without your presence. Numb, I grieve the person you came to be. Disturbing the stillness to leave lillies at your feet. In this newfound independence, our time together dissolves into a…
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The Tiger’s Veil
Edited by Alloe Mak My grandmother was born in the late 1800s, in a village where mangroves knotted thick as hair and the air hung heavy with salt and smoke from clay stoves. Even when I was small, I knew the jungle was listening. It creaked and hissed like something breathing, like something waiting. “Don’t…
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maybe the real performative male is the friends we made along the way
Edited by Alloe Mak and Liam Mason You’ve seen the memes. You know the phenotype. A man with a slim build and an ironic moustache. A carabiner clipped to thrifted baggy jeans. Patchwork tattoos and hand-rolled cigarettes. Carrying a New Yorker tote bag. Carrying an A24 tote bag. Sporting a slogan t-shirt reading “THE FUTURE…