On Missing

by Melissa Watt

I could play the guitar
just barely and I would try
when we’d arrive home

all liquor dilated, hearts
more capable of loving.
As far as I can tell, there’s nothing

that lights me up like this
once did. The magic in my life
is quieter now, but grace,

once parsimonious, now crackles
through my circuits: microscopic
wildflowers in my rushing blood.

I hear it in the right side of early mornings
the bright side, long past my vice
slide to the bottom of the sea.

Call this “Forgiveness,” “my thirties,” “God.”
What was it that held me there
and now has let me go?

So little happens on a given day
but I feel lucky, standing solid gold
outside the event horizon.

Melissa Watt holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Her poems have been featured in The Breakwater Review, Ohio Edit, and elsewhere. If she’s not writing, she’s probably singing karaoke with a live band or catching spiders and taking them outside as a favor to her loved ones.

A Word from the Editor

The 47 student volunteers on staff work hard to make this literary journal a safe and sacred space, from the manner in which we discuss submissions, to how we collaborate with one another. As we work toward our goal to foster equity in publishing, it became even more evident to me that material cannot be divorced from the process; that as editors, we must align our editorial conventions with this vision. During the making of this issue, it was not uncommon for eight or more editors and assistant editors of different genres to engage in a thoughtful discussion of any given piece. We leaned into each other’s experiences to inform editorial decisions. One such decision was refusing to provide a platform for those who work against or trivialize the pursuit of justice…

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