by Tanya Shirazi Galvez (Editor)
Longing is inextricable from desire, pain, grief. We can long to return
to a past, one where our fears, preoccupations, sorrows feel opaque in
comparison to the joy, love and ecstasy that make our lives feel whole.
The desire for what we cannot have. Or for what never was, never
existed. For the unfinished, the undone, a pause in the past.
In these works, we long for the opportunity to see the graduation
caps that never went up in the air, a yearning to be loved again, we
"remember the blood." A response to a job opportunity has catastrophic
consequences for a budding flower shop, a community is marked after
an unspeakable crime, a widow finds freedom in unexpected ways,
a daughter experiences inexplicable pain. We reexamine childhood
memories that have instilled shame and revisit mother tongues.