January 16th, 2017

Kasy Long is a senior creative writing major at Ohio Northern University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, Otoliths, The Sucarnochee Review, Glass Mountain, The RavensPerch, and Polaris Literary Magazine. In her free time, she watches I Love Lucy, reads Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and dreams about the beautiful Lake Chautauqua in western New York. After graduation, she hopes to work in communications for a thriving cultural museum.
 

---

                        Infinite World of Curiosity

      An open textbook carefully highlighted with blue ink sits on a wooden desk. A pair of dark brown glasses rest on the crack between the two pages; specks of dust clutter the lens. The window blinds are tilted open, allowing the bright streetlamp from outside the apartment to fade into the study room. James Horner’s orchestral scores play softly from a sound system, the sound bouncing off the painted white walls. A journal is left open next to the textbook, with musings scribbled in a pale pencil lead marking.
    The girl returns to the study—her blond hair still wet from her evening shower. She sits down at the desk and places the glasses around her ears. She cleans away the dust and smudges from the day. Her mind switches gears as she turns to the book in front of her. She grabs her blue highlighter and reads, her eyes skimming over the lines on the page while her head nods to the beat of the music. She makes a note of a question that arises upon her reading, and her curiosity builds as she ponders the answer. She turns her head toward the window and releases a sigh as her mind travels upward and beyond the space of the room to the land of infinite curiosity.