Dear Reader,

 

Bequest marks a fresh start, a new beginning—our second year as a publication. Within these pages, we are thrilled to feature four contest winners whose work embodies this spirit of introspection and reflection. 

 

A bequest is both a gift and a burden. More than a transfer of possessions, it is the act of passing down knowledge and remembrance. Robert Stone contemplates our memory of being: “There were things in this house that could not be removed, the indelible things”. We are inexorably connected to the bonds that tie us to the past. In them, we coil the essence of ourselves.

 

But our truths carry themselves forward in the world. “Every morning is a homage / to the one before,” Jordan Muscal writes in “This is the Story of How We Begin to Remember.” Each action threads the moment between continuity and change.

 

So, we bequeath these twenty-one works to you. Toss them between your hands and watch as they map a world of patchwork lineages. Their words are thrown with faith—a gift to the world, implicitly given. 

 

There will be days when we can only plead our longing. Derek Chan offers an answer: “to circle back / to what the sleet estranged from [us]—[our] own / footprints gathered / around this lone snowdrop.” He reminds us how an exchange must be between two, our being infinitely altered by those around us to an extent equal to the infinite impact of ourselves. 

 

And again and again we find ourselves. Together, “crouched / in this paleness”, reaching for each other’s “innermost light.” Then it was morning.

 

With light,

Iris, Felix, Jessica

Eucalyptus Lit