Love's Dawn by Anastasia MarkusThe First Breath of Light
There is a specific quality to the morning that feels like a promise kept. Before the world wakes, before the noise of the day begins to pull at our sleeves, there is a stillness that tastes of dew and new beginnings. It is the hour when the…
Diplomat Cake by Larisa SferleThe Architecture of Absence
It is 3:42 am. The silence in this room is heavy, the kind that presses against your ribs until you have to remind yourself how to breathe. I find myself thinking about the things we construct to mask the emptiness—the layers we stack, the…
From Graveyard to Playland by Aakash GulzarThe Soil Beneath Our Feet
When I was seven, my cousin Tunde and I spent an entire Saturday digging in the corner of my grandmother’s garden. We were convinced that if we went deep enough, we would find the roots of the world. We hit old bricks, rusted metal, and once,…