It never rains inside the hospital,
but the families of patients are like snow geese
in a flooded field. In one forest,
a kingfisher dying. Do ravens still guard
our kingdom? I don’t remember
much except how the nurse was a mockingbird
and the doctor kept trying to rebuild
the nest. Where did I fly to
when the doctor said, Your father
has an unrecognizable word, morphine,
unrecognizable word, his blood pressure
is a flooded field, his blood pressure is sinking.
Yes, it is raining, unrecognizable word,
unrecognizable word. He won’t be coming home.

The man working on my back says,
I’m concerned with your relationship to pain,
he’s joking, his elbow baring
down on some back bedroom in the house
of my spine. He asks how it feels.
I say, It’s a good hurt. But harder.
Deeper. He presses a star in an upper
galaxy and the heat of an astronomical object
dies in my shoulder blade. He tells me
he can trace the curve of what I’m made of,
I ask him to get under my wingspan,
press deep into the part of me that aches.
Classical music plays in the background,
I remember the violinist who left me
in high school after a friend slid his hands
inside me though I said no.
How can we repair another lifetime?
How can we break away from what we hold?
There are certain times in my life
I can see the threads in the fabric that hold me
together. I want the scissors out
of the equation, but when I cut myself
from the garment, I love the sound
of slice, the release. The man working on
my back moves his thumb slowly down
the edge of my vertebrae, says,
We can heal this. It doesn’t have to hurt
to be good.

I don’t have to remind you
of my sorrow, my father’s pocketwatch
found in a mist of dust,
still working the graveyard
shift. Now there’s time to tend the orchids
in the morning until death enters
the greenhouse to say if
she had lived, I wouldn’t be
here—one life leaves and
another arrives to replace it.
I don’t have to remind you,
my father’s diary was made of seeds
and suicides, postage stamps and wheat
pennies, time disguised as blossoms,
an open wound, blinkworthy, how quick
the watering can become a riptide.
Sometimes I remind you to choose
a card as if we’re cutting heartache
in half and putting it back together,
we’re here, dovelike and uncaged,
a ghost holding the door open
to the disappearing box and yet,
the ticking of the pocketwatch
without being wound, in these days
any magic will do.

You are assigned your Purpose before leaving the Mother Womb. Void of conscious thought and concept of self, your entire life is planned out on your behalf. A Technician does what they are designated to do: scans your essence and your flesh, feeds the results into the Cosmic Mind. An on-duty Designator does what they…

Dear lovely reader,

Spring issues of F(r)iction are always special for us because they mark the birthday of this lovely little journal. When we started F(r)iction back in 2015, there were strict rules to follow if one were foolish enough to start a literary journal. You published traditional literature. You made the books as cheaply as possible. You didn’t publish new writers because they wouldn’t sell copies. And you never, ever, ever uttered the words “editorial art,” “genre,” or (heaven forbid) “comics.”

But we dreamed of something different—a collection of stories that would enchant us regardless of genre, where the biggest names in the industry shared a spine with brand new voices from diverse backgrounds, voices we would mentor every step of the way. It would be a book brimming with color and art and specialty printing. Every page would be as lush as the stories within.

Everyone told us it was a bad idea, but we were fueled by passion and naivety and stubbornness—which turns out to be the perfect mix for doing something wrong in just the right way.

And now, four years later, we are being challenged yet again.

The industry is shifting. Pillars like Glimmer Train and Tin House are falling, and we’re hearing the same warnings that plagued us when we started—that readership is dwindling, that mentorship isn’t economically viable, that while publishing new, innovative voices is great optics, it’s a foolish gamble within an industry in decline.

It’s a confidence shaker, to say the least, to see great journals go under. It’s caused many to lose hope and close up shop, or not start the shop in the first place. And with each new day, a seemingly indifferent world chips away at passion and naivety and stubbornness.

But we’re not going anywhere.

In fact, we’re expanding. Crazy, you say? Indeed. No argument there. But we love stories. We believe in their power to change the world. And we’re not giving up.

So, dear reader, consider this our Comeback issue. If readerships are dying, we’ll find new ways to reach them. As prices go up, we’ll find new ways to generate funding. When innovative magazines fall, we’ll take up the torch.

We’re celebrating with a journal jam-packed with underdog stories. From industry greats like Joyce Carol Oates to brand new voices we’ve mentored for months, this journal is steeped in fighting spirit and some of the loveliest art we’ve ever put out. We hope this helps you with your own battles, because it sure as hell has helped with ours.

For those of you who have been with us since the beginning, thank you. For those just joining us, thanks for taking a chance on our weird little book. You’re as much a part of this cavalry as our editors, artists, and authors. 

Now let’s all charge into the breach, my friends. There’s a battle to be won. 

Cheers,

Dani Hedlund
Editor-in-Chief