Editor's Remarks

      russellstreet CC



How is it that these words of ours are somehow able to hold us together? What impossible alchemy of elements mixes in our broken hearts? December often seems to smooth us over, like an ocean does a rock. But why would one need a reason to be so soft? There are reasons to be hard, to hide, to dig in. And there are, sometimes, reasons to reach out. How far can we extend? For how long? Who knows.

The poems, stories and truths in this issue make me think it is important that we at least try to unlock the words that become trapped in us. Find the place where they run off our page and toward other hearts that are also on the outs. To know total disrepair and breakdown is to speak softly, when and where one can.  

Trauma creates a blank but something else in us finds a form and lives on despite a thousand, generously gifted deaths. We cobble together a patchwork beauty. We are so necessary it hurts. And hurting, that too is necessary. If we're lucky we live through the pain to tell our own story. We share a light born of a thousand wounds. From here to there, everything happens without warning. Love, forgiveness, grace, mercy, pain, laughter. Healing is the song, no matter the words. They find their time, come when they are called. We are called to be here for each other, it's that simple and that complicated. 

​
James Diaz
Founding Editor
Anti-Heroin Chic