Editor's Remarks

       Alexander Rabb CC


And do we ever arrive, I wonder? Or is it like this; that we come to be - in between what we had expected to find and what most often tends to find us. It is measured in the making of every life, not just the pain, but what comes of pain, still painful, but also different.  We are not always, if ever, reborn or made magically anew. A poem is no perfect formula, no magic index.. One’s good touch cannot erase all of the wrong kinds of touch, but I believe it adds something that wasn’t there before, and that that something grows. It is voracious, hungry for love and for goodness. I am not one to say what those things are supposed to look like. They come unbidden and uniquely garbed for each of us in different ways at different times of our lives.

It turns out that I needed to be held recently, in a noisy bar, experiencing the first panic attack I have had in over a decade, someone saw that I needed more than a hug. That something that is always growing even in the midst of intense pain and uncertainty, the thing that feeds and carries us, the thing we never see coming until it is upon us. That we can be seen and felt and reassured. That we are, none of us, no matter the mounting evidence of our hard, hard years, ever alone.

And have we arrived if we’re still wondering when we’ll arrive?

In the meantime, stories heal. They heal because in the telling of them we begin to see the distance that has been traveled for what it is; a real miracle. Not Godly or angelic, but unexpected. We didn’t see it coming, that we’d make it this far. The world tried its best to convince us that we didn’t belong, and yet, and yet, here we are, you and I. Telling our stories. Singing our songs.

There are things we need and don’t yet know we need, or most often, how to find or ask for them. And there are those who are there to give it to us when we both need it most and least expect to find it. Where will my water come from, the thirsty plant wonders? And then it rains and it rains and it rains.

This February, let us remember that while a good touch/gesture cannot cure or fix us, it can hold us up when we fear we might fall hardest and forever apart. The poems and stories, the courage, the beauty and the breakdown in this month’s issue are proof of what happens when just enough light gets through. Just enough. And do we ever arrive? I suspect it’s best not to know. Not just yet.
 
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James Diaz
Founding Editor
Anti-Heroin Chic