When my sister was a teenager, she broke a small bone in her foot. After surgery, she walked around for months in a cast, leaning on crutches or balancing on one foot. She often looked like a flamingo, her white shell hovering in midair or resting gently atop the other foot. When the doctor finally cut the cast off – tearing through the plaster with a small hand saw – we were shocked to see her calf so withered and small, nearly half the size of its opposite. “Atrophy,” the doctor said. He called it perfectly normal, but for days we would stop and look at her calf, at just how small it had become in what felt like only a moment. We wondered how long it would take to grow back, to build and build until it could fully support her again.
Dictionaries define atrophy as a loss of muscle, a wasting away due to underuse. When you look up the word atrophy, sometimes you can find the word involution as a distant relation. Involution has many definitions, some related to algebra, others related to philosophy. It can mean the process of complicating, a folding in on oneself, but most often it is defined as a shrinking due to inactivity.
In the early days of the pandemic, when my fiancé and I were home together every day, we talked often about missing friends and family. We joined regular Zoom calls – family happy hours and brunches and game nights. I called my grandmother and aunts 3 or 4 times a week, always on different days so that each afternoon I heard someone else’s voice. I called my sisters nearly every day and we took turns sharing how long it had been since we had spoken to various friends and family. Over months and months, the Zoom dates dwindled and the phone calls grew shorter. Our world got smaller and quieter, and when the possibility of seeing people finally arrived, I wondered if I had those muscles anymore. Would I know what questions to ask or when it was appropriate to laugh? Did I know where to put my arms when someone reached to hug me? What if I didn’t?
This issue has been a joy to assemble for us. These pieces ask difficult and beautiful questions. Questions with surprising answers and questions with no answers at all. These pieces examine the way we lose things and the way we connect with one another. They want to know what it means to love something you have no control over, something you cannot protect. They want to situate themselves in the vastness of this world, to hold their identity around themselves as a safety net. They want to fold inwards and expand out at the same time.
We hope you find the same vastness in these pieces, the same endless curiosity. We hope they leave you with some answers and more questions.
With warmth,
Hannah Newman & Jesse Ewing-Frable
Sweet Tree Review