“March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
April has begun. The seams of March have ripped apart, and as I write this the temperatures have climbed all the way into the low 80s. Even individually, things are picking up after a March slump. I jokingly called my mom this morning to tell her I had finally washed my sheets for the first time in… well I won’t say exactly how long but just know I’m not proud of it. For this new month and new season, we’ve asked our writers to celebrate reawakening in their pieces, taking on new perspectives and stories of dormant entities.
When exploring dormancy, vibrancy, and everything in between, it can be difficult to find the most accurate, evocative words. In the interest of exploration, Bailey Middleton brings us “Budding Rose,” a poem personifying mother nature into a story about trauma, self sacrifice and recovery. Nature imagery is translated into the form of raging rivers and immovable boulders in “Water and Rocks” as Kiki Mclaughlin dives deep into personal struggles and the rejuvenating properties of writing your own story. As one can revive themself, we all take turns helping each other grow like seeds in a garden. This is the framework Jasmine Wang uses in “The Root of My Mother” to expand upon mother-daughter relationships, the interactive way one raises the other and vice versa.
In addition to the natural resurgence we see around us in the rivers and plants, we’ve seen plenty of reemerging media in recent years. For this issue, Cheyenne Butler revisited the coincidentally named book, The Awakening, which she had read first in high school. Her updated thoughts on the book's themes and representations of feminist ideas are summarized in “My Awakening with The Awakening.” Moving from print media to television, Miriella Jiffar reflects on her new obsession with the Netflix show Shadow & Bone (and its star actor), a dystopian heroic tale reminiscent of the books she adored so much as a child in “Yes, I Take Screenshots of Shadow and Bone’s Ben Barnes and Send Them to My Friends.”
Personal journeys may break through the confines of the media that shapes us, in many cases taking the form of spontaneous, more literal journeys. Hailey Robbins recently seized the day by driving solo to the sunny beaches of Florida, and now shares with us “9 Things I Learned from My Solo Spring Break.” Of course, our personal choices are not solely personal in every context, hence why Eryn Rhodes has taken on the tension of personal choices under oppressive systems in the interest of comfort in her article “Margaret Thatcher Girlbossery and the Feet Pictures of @OnlyFans: Is It Feminism?,” a satiric, cutting commentary on accountability, both collective and individual.
We hope this issue finds you in an era of reawakenings yourself, and I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that we anxiously anticipate the opening of the pools this summer. Thanks to Mary Esselman, Addie Gilligan, and KJ Villanueva for all your hard work, as always.
