Issue 154

He turned his head slightly, and I laced my fingers together behind his head, letting the water rise to the corners of his closed eyes. I looked at him from upside down. Long nose, hollow cheeks, the double scars on each which he insisted came from a knife fight but seen from this angle I guessed they were deliberate, he’d cut himself, alone and looking in the mirror, slicing to mark a private rite of passage. The world stubbornly lacking mythology, not supplying a fight when he needed one.

— Kate Cayley, “Doc”

A house! Nerves jolt up my neck in a panicked excitement. I am going to live in a real house! The house is more than 150 years old, its foundation was laid long before the winding stretch of road became the major intersection it is today. I have never seen a real house before, let alone lived in one. It is raining. A woodpecker, seemingly lost, is pecking away at our house, at the cement layers between bricks. While sitting in the car, my mother shows me how to print my name using the condensation: 清, which in Mandarin means clear; water; a bruise.

— Isabella Wang, “Rain Clouds”

As human beings we don’t always do well with unity: we run, we bolt, we isolate ourselves, we push away the people that we love. On the other hand, we also don’t always do well with division, demarcation. We cry out against our mortality, against the limits of our mortal lives; we try with all our might to hold onto those who are not ours to keep. It is not very often in life that one is able to willingly part oneself from that to which one is most attached, for the sake of its continuation.

— Amanda Jernigan, “Losing to Find: Collaboration and Love”