Ellen Girardeau Kempler remembers roses and “conjure[s] their phantom colors.” Joel Barker watches the river flow by “already gone” as “Lethe turns and bites herself.” Who wouldn’t want more wax on life’s candle, as James Engelhardt ponders. Or perhaps another candle on life’s cake, as captured in Erin Connorton’s photograph. If we’re diligent enough, precise with our archival methods, we can stretch “time like an accordion,” move deep through generations, through centuries and millennia, as Willa Carroll explores in her poem.

I could go on with examples from this collection that engage with the age-old question of age—of time itself.

And, of course, there is time’s sidekick, memory. That constantly running, imperfect recording device. What is time, after all, without one moment being compared to another. Then and now, this year and last.

Many selections in this issue are deep reflections on past experience, parsing through those moments left behind, lingering loves, and the lessons learned. At times in our creative process (and otherwise), we feel lost. We feel loss. Heartbreak pierces us and throbs and dulls. Our passions burn and consume and smolder.

But there’s also profound beauty in these selections. A moment of reverence for a red triangle slug on a windowpane, or compassion for a kite hawk circling, or the hushed attention for a church bell ringing the hour. The fleeting sense of just being what is or just feeling cool air pass through your nostrils.

Perhaps you will find something heartbreaking in this issue, and if so, I assure you that you will also find something beautiful.

(And if you don’t feel anything from this issue, please check to see if there’s still air passing through your nostrils!)

Thank you all for being a part of WRJ.

Aaron Lelito, Editor in Chief