Editor’s Note

It’s summer in the States, the thick heat of July, and I am yearning for a breeze, a stirring of something better swooping in. We’re sick of the oppressive heat, the oppressive policies and undermining of institutions, the consolidation of power into predatory hands. It’s about fucking time for something new.

Still, change is hard, even terrifying. When upheaval is crackling on the horizon, you know it may break bad, know things may get even worse.

In “Three Aprils,” Danielle Monroe describes being launched into uncertainty, into “…that torrent of delights and sorrows and the hot in-betweens, where everything is felt and nothing is clear.” And damn if that doesn’t perfectly capture it. So that’s our challenge, to live bravely in the hot in-betweens, to sit with the discomfort of resistance, to reinvent ourselves through each painful moment so that we might find what’s on the other side.

We can start by listening to the most vulnerable, those who risk the danger of the uncertain with their very existence. Here we have a collection of voices that charge right into the heart of that danger. Their characters are hungry for connection, for affirmation, for a new way forward. They yearn to expose their vulnerable hearts to the love they crave and crave and crave. This may mean imitating a mother’s feral wildness or flirting with a witchier life. It could be hopping into bed with a near-stranger, or forcing the pro-life to face their dead, or searching carcasses for signs of what’s to come. It may even mean carving out space to share that love with themselves.

Read on and face the uncertain future alongside these characters. Let’s dig into that hot in-between space and, together, find our way through.

Table of Contents

Title	Genre	Writer
Self-Congratulation	Poetry	M. M. Adjarian
my southern bones	Poetry	Emma Townsend
I Love You, God, But This is the Last Time I’m Asking	Flash Fiction	Lindy Biller
Missed Connections	Non-conforming	Jennifer Lai
December	Fiction	Sara Rauch
To The Girl Working at the Tea Shop in Provincetown	Poetry	Harriet Weaver
Three Aprils	Flash CNF	Danielle Monroe
Make-a-Micro	Interactive	Vast Editors