Longing: An Aster(ix) Anthology, December 2024

Longing is inextricable from desire, pain, grief. We can long to returnto a past, one where our fears, preoccupations, sorrows feel opaque incomparison to the joy, love and ecstasy that make our lives feel whole.The desire for what we cannot have. Or for what never was, neverexisted. For the unfinished, the undone, a pause in the past.In these works, we long for the opportunity to see the graduationcaps that never went up in the air, a yearning to be loved again, we"remember the blood." A response to a job opportunity has catastrophicconsequences for a budding flower shop, a community is marked afteran unspeakable crime, a widow finds freedom in unexpected ways,a daughter experiences inexplicable pain. We reexamine childhoodmemories that have instilled shame and revisit mother tongues.