A ferry cuts through the water on a crisp, foggy evening.
A man in a gray suit stands on the deck anxiously checking his timepiece. He pats the photo in his breast pocket if only to remind himself that he still hasn’t lost it.
A young woman turns up the volume of her headphones to drown out the sound of the hyper toddler running about nearby. She sinks into her seat and closes her eyes as the song washes over her, gentle guitar and crooning voices. For the first time all day, the music is finally able to quiet down her thoughts. And she rests.
The captain at the helm steers the ship slightly starboard with precision. There are rocks in these waters, of course, but after years of sailing this same route, the captain knows how to navigate them the way you know the path back to bed when you get up to pace in the middle of the night.
The lighthouse keeper does his rounds. He yawns once, but holds his heavy eyes open with the knowledge of the importance of his work.
The ferry docks at the harbor. People wait on the pier, some standing in groups and others alone. And the fish scurry out of the way of the bow of the ship, briefly breaking formation to avoid a collision.
The gray-suited man walks nervously to his waiting sweetheart. The young woman gets in a car with her mother and lies when she asks how she’s doing. The family with the young child carefully buckles her snugly into her carseat, now warm and sound asleep. The captain watches it all as he finishes up his duties for the night.
The ferry is safely in the harbor, and the lighthouse keeper goes to bed, pondering what happy reunions or shrouded secrets he may have just guided carefully to shore.
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Carley Frajda opens our "Harbors" issue with her experimental poem, “Mosaic” which explores the shatters left behind in the wake of a relationship. In “Shutters of Water / Studies of Water,” Simone Minor also uses poetry to ponder relationships — with the water, with others, and with herself.
Next, Jackie Bond invites the reader to embark on a journey into memory and sisterhood in “The Luckiest Little Sister,” a sweet and sentimental piece reminiscing on memories of sisterhood. Cassie Dallas welcomes the readers to new and exciting literary shores. If you’ve been longing for a fresh new poem, Cassie Dallas has got you covered with her list of “Eight Poems to Welcome Spring.”
Ella Powell takes the reader on an oneiric trek through the woods of the Pacific Northwest in her piece “An Afternoon at Deception’s Pass.” And finally, Jordan Coleman closes this issue with her fiction piece “And They Were Roommates…?,” a wholesome and hilarious enemies-to-lovers story about two college roommates.
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Thank you to Miriella Jiffar and Mary Esselman for being our fearless captains. Your support and guidance has been invaluable to me and I will be forever grateful. Thank you to Leigh Ann Carver for always helping to steer us straight. Thank you to Annie Gibson and the wonderful Social Media team for hoisting our sails on Instagram every issue. Thank you to the wonderful Iris artists Daphenie Joseph, Judy Zhao, and Seble Alemu for making waves for us with your incredible artwork.
Thank you to Jasmine Wang for teaching me all the Iris ropes and more. Thank you to Jordan Coleman for being a lifeboat for me in our early days of Iris when we felt adrift. Thank you to all of the Iris writers for being the best crew we could have asked for. Thank you to Taylor Nichols for giving a guest speech in an introductory history seminar, a lighthouse guiding me to the Women’s Center and Iris.
And many thanks to you, the Iris readers who are the most wonderful passengers on our literary ventures.
