“As evident through the submissions, collectively, we are being invited into a deeper communion and intimacy with our own hearts and its language; to get curious about the mystery long enough that she begins to reveal herself to us; to listen with all physical and psychic senses for what is being said beneath the words being said and following that thread; and to clarify our channel continually until our unique signature and song emerges.”

“The process of deciphering patience for the self is gritty, maybe long, but overall rewarding. I may not be able to fully tell you whether my inquiries going into this Issue emerged as one definitive answer. That is for you, the reader, to ponder over as you reflect on what you chance upon and then, if possible, ask your question of what patience is to you.”

“Patience asks of us to embrace and accept our sensuality, at times she is soft, subtle and so very fertile with infinite portals to walk through. Simultaneously, she pushes us out and gives birth to us, sometimes despite our own will, and demands of us to show up when it is our time.”

“After we descend down into ourselves, after we have come home to a particular knowing of who we are, what happens when we have landed? Have we fully landed and taken the chance to be still, or are we still moving? Is this where patience comes into play in this grand continuum of experience?”

“Your persistence delivered me here. I am indebted to you.”

A self-portrait in photography capturing the fluidity and inherited softness of my Black woman and nonbinary journey in a sliding spectrum of being perceived.

“There are days when I regret making friends with my grief, but then I remember all the times she / helped me give birth to my joys.”

“And for a second, we were one and the same. Two people, lost, searching for something we didn’t know existed. We were both singing songs no one else could hear.”

As this piece came together I felt it reflected back to me the faces of countless Black women tired beyond compare yet still showing up to the day or the battle with their heads up. I saw the exhaustion and yet something else, the discovery of a deeply held resilience and power.

“Moved by Whitman and the ephemerality of my youth, I decided that I would embrace whatever beauty and grace were available to me and maximize the life that I was, at the moment, so happy with.”

“though the table feels empty, with me alone / the air thick with unspoken words, / I savor this bowl, finding comfort”

“i am a moth because / my father was a moth / and his father was a moth “

“…to love this body / is to deem it worthy of patience / and endless grace no other earthly being could grant even if they tried.”

“She is looking back at me. At my weeds and vines, flies and thorns, slime and moss, my uncontained overgrowth. Unfettered. Unafraid. Similarly besotted.”

“Her brow breaks like the tide…”

“now it’s mother, / tied with the ropes of rebellion, / gagged by the makeshift cloth / made of the skin of her daughter’s heart—”

Even in the hushed seasons of our lives, there is a spring song.

“I, too, carry the burden of blooms: / chrysanthemums of achievement, / ivy of promises, entwined too tight—”