Editor’s Note

Especially during times of uncertainty and unrest, I yearn for a simplicity often associated with childhood, a time when joy and wonder wait around every corner and imagination offers the freedom to escape into another world. This vision of childhood isn’t a reality for many young people. Still, it is something we can strive for no matter our age, something we can look to find in the stories we listen to and read.

This issue’s contributors offer us the world viewed through young eyes. Children navigating difficult paths carved by their adults through backyard swamps and airports and tiger-infested apartments. Young people yearning for stability, for someone to truly see, protect, and love them. Even a grown adult reflecting on a lesson learned in youth.

When what is happening in the news and in our neighborhoods creates fear and grief that weigh heavy on our hearts, my hope is that knowing one another through the words we share will break through isolation and nurture compassion that will see us through.

Today, we may feel unmoored in a dark and shifting chasm that stretches out before us, but we can take a note from the characters living in this issue. We can imagine a reality beyond what seems possible today. Together, we can build a new and solid foundation—one where each of us is safe, surrounded in the comfort and security of our communities, filled with awe and wonder, and thriving in the light of a new day.

Table of Contents

Title	Genre	Writer
Restrained	Fiction	Stephanie Bucklin
Swamp Pie	Flash Fiction	Ruth Joffre
Terminal	Fiction	Marcie Roman
King Breaker	Flash Fiction	Mathieu Parsy
Diamonds	Poetry	Orly Berkowitz-Henkin
She Says, “I Look Good”	Flash CNF	Emma McCoy
Placemat Playtime	Interactive	Vast Editors