Reconciliation is paradoxical. It is both an invocation and a choice. In a world fraught with division, the concept of reconciliation emerges as both a challenge and an inspiration, calling upon us to confront our differences, acknowledge past wrongs, and look to the possibility of renewal. The forks in the road we all face are difficult ones, but we cannot flee forever.

It is the tail-end of 2023. As this Californian winter settles into a cadence of rain, we are thinking of reinvention. A passage is a journey, a moving through—of a terminal, of a time. A passage is also a group of written sentences. Passages begin and end. Passage begets passage.

In these pages, you'll find a wealth of emotions, experiences, and perspectives that reflect the world as seen through the eyes of writers from all backgrounds. The theme for this issue, Interconnection, was demonstrated through both the breadth of the work published and their writers—we received almost 200 submissions, with authors from Pakistan to Hungary, from the American South to right here in the Bay Area.