Under the Wound is Soil
Dear Beloved Readers,
For this ekphrastic issue, An Escape into Time, we invite you to step into the swirling, unchartedness of Time. Our artists guide our vision of Time, molding it into a second, a moment, a geography where there is no clock to dictate our rhythm—no hands to pull us forward or backward. They called us to set down your watches and your phones, so that we could breathe boundlessly. Here, where Time is not a force that bends us to its will, but a landscape in which we are free to roam, to lose ourselves, and to find ourselves again, our writers pick up their pens and write—inspired by the artist’s creations.
In the pieces that follow, our staff has embraced Time as a malleable, experimental space in which to imagine, disorient, and explore. In other words, they are engaging with the queerness of time. We hope you’ll take a liberating leap beyond the constraints of a linear chronology or conventional timekeeping with us, where time is no longer a straight line, but could be a sphere, loop, spiral, or maybe it’s shaped like the Bean!
We bid you to consider: How does time stretch, bleed, and slide through our fingers like slippery sand? What if Time does not exist to limit us but to expand us, to make room for every possibility, every choice, every change of heart? Can you imagine a world where time itself behaves according to your own whims?
Ananya Sairaman’s “Under the Wound is Soil” opens our issue alongside this letter, asking us to dig our fingernails deep, planting our fingers like salt in the wound. While rummaging in the deep, you’ll find Corinna Keum’s painting “comforted by the roots that hug u” and Diana Zhang’s love letter filled with voracious, carnal, and cannibal desire.
Moved by Hannah Nguyen’s “Once Upon The Past,” writer Jenny Vu returns us to an August that lies in the chasm between childhood and adulthood, between America and Vietnam. Lanie Myaing’s collage “Can You Remember?” inspires Diana Zhang’s vignettes of childhood memories—vanishing like breath in lungs.
Gloria Sung’s “A Sign of the Times,” accompanied by Vaidehi Bhardwaj’s poem, both remembers a nuclear past and prophesies a destructive future. What does it mean for suffering to reach across the world in a single embrace?
Sarah Jun’s one-page comic “Here in the Now,” alongside Avery Carlson’s writing, pulls us back into the present, offering a reprieve from the drudgery of monotonous labor. While Sarah and Avery release us, in “A Fleeting Fairytale,” artist Sneha Lakamsani and writer Megana Kumar reimagine the classic Cinderella story, exploring what happens when she becomes trapped in time.
Lanie Myaing’s art “Time As We Know It” and Scarlet M’s writing also tinker with time, twisting and tangling a person’s lifetime into one giant knot. Judy Zhao’s “Sleeping with Flies” and Sarayu Kurra’s writing close our issue. Intertwining the existence of hatred with a hope for love culminates in the evolution of humanity: the ultimate passing of time.
Our staff reveals how time bends like a playful ribbon, folding in on itself, teasing us with its elasticity. We hope you joined us in this warped dance—skipped, twirled, and stumbled alongside a time that can stretch and shrink, blur and sharpen.
A heartfelt thank you to our artists, writers, editorial board, and, of course, our readers. Your willingness to embrace this distortion, to lean into the fluidity of time, is what makes this annual ekphrastic issue so special. Unbounded by measured time, here our creativity flows, unrestrained and abundant. Thank you for holding this moment in your hands, savoring it before it slips away and scatters through our fingers.
With all our love,
Jasmine and Aliza <3
