I was being led by something. So tender and raw inside of my body that I can’t point to a specific place — there was me before I had ever seen a dam.

The week the pandemic hits, I break my lease in Little Haiti and drive fifteen hours up the I-95 to be with my parents.

I am not. Two weeks or more since a call. To be in America, / You must see American, close your eyes and dream American

Every morning the sparrows sing / Every day there is another funeral

so let's talk then about unruliness / how it defies the joys of order & everything / that's missed.

Quail rise in ruffles from the sage. / Pebbles I scraped into my knee look / like they belong there.

Elsewhere a bell rings /medieval in its calling and here / I fumble for a reliquary

— or the ketchup packet one / over in the adjacent deli, the dearth of good strawberries / in produce.

In 1996, the year my mother died of a heroin overdose, Purdue Pharma started to sell OxyContin in the United States.

house become island, as inland pushes out / land. Outlandish, you say, this push and pull—

I / am ruined / how could I / ever leave / this wound

The form asks for / my job. Stay-at-home-parent, / a response given by the dozen, / lands wrong these months.

TSW Art Director, Meg Sykes, on creating the featured image for Issue 13: Rebellious Joy

TSW Artist in Residence, Bianca Ng, on creating the featured art for Issue 13: Rebellious Joy

TSW Artist in Residence, Bianca Ng, writes a meditative inquiry into rest