On a sunny day when my cousin was two, she woke up from her nap in a rush. She flung off her blanket, dipped her chubby toes onto the carpet, and flew down the stairs. Nearly stumbling on her own feet, blonde curls bouncing frantically, she ran into the living room shouting for her mother. “I have to show you, I have to show you,” she burbled. My aunt sat patiently while my cousin went to the far side of the room, bent her knees in a slight crouch, and took off running. Midway through the room, she leapt into the air, feet flung back behind her. When she landed, her mother clapped and cheered. “A beautiful leap,” she called.
My cousin scrunched up her little nose and marched back to the other side of the room. Again and again she took off running, leaping, and landing in the middle of the room. After a few tries, big tears welled in her eyes. “It’s not working,” she sobbed.
“But you’re jumping so high,” my aunt replied.
My cousin pushed her tiny fists into her eyes, tears slipping past her fingers. “I’m supposed to fly,” she wept.
Lewis Carroll once wrote, “I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours.” In moments of great loss, love, and awe, the common world can make infinitely less sense – feel infinitely less real – than the worlds we can create ourselves. Sometimes these worlds we build are a means of escape, a way to leave behind the tragedies of this very real space. Other times, the experiences we have in real life seem just too incredible to be true. Their vibrancy appears in surreal moments, as though we have been swept away to somewhere new. And occasionally we create a world that is far more joyous than our own. That feels considerably more real than surreal. A world in which we can fly.
The stories, essays, and poems in this issue build worlds. Some very much like our own and some that reach beyond surreal. They are rife with emotionally complex landscapes that make our hearts beat faster, the hairs on our forearms stand tall. We hope the pieces in this issue reach you in that way too, and make your breath hitch in your throat. We hope they take you away to somewhere fantastical, somewhere so real it’s impossible.
With warmth,
Jesse Ewing-Frable & Hannah Newman
Sweet Tree Review