When I was little, I picked favorite words for how they sounded. “Bubble.” “Lullaby.” “Marshmallow.” I liked the softness of them, how they felt in my mouth. Now, I care more about what words mean. My favorite word these days is ambedo—a kind of melancholic trance where you become fully absorbed in the sensory details of a moment. That word captures the kind of writing I love most. The kind that lingers. That’s honest, vivid, and willing to sit in discomfort without trying to fix it.

That’s the kind of work we’ve gathered in this issue of Rappahannock Review.

Being an editor for this journal changed how I read. It made me slower, softer, more curious. I found myself drawn not to the tidiest pieces, but to the ones that unsettled me a little, ones that made me think. I learned to trust that feeling. Not just being impressed, but being moved. I spent a lot of time thinking about rhythm, contrast, and emotion, how the pieces speak to each other, how the whole issue breathes as one. As a team, we poured ourselves into this work. Through our insight, care, and shared love for the pieces, we’ve shaped something so raw and real and deeply honest.

There are threads of grief, resilience, memory, and place running through this issue. Elina Kumra’s “Beneath the Broken Arc: A Gaza Elegy,” one of the strongest nonfiction pieces I’ve ever read, doesn’t offer comfort; it strips myth down to its bones and asks what’s left when stories can’t carry the weight of real suffering. Marco Etheridge’s “Tati and Darkness” lets form blur with perspective, told through the voice of Darkness itself. The story leans into contrast, holding light and shadow, fear and tenderness, without forcing a clear divide. Alexis Barton’s “The Unspoken Space Between Dusk and Dark” moves with restraint. Its long, careful lines mirror the slow work of grief.

Ambedo captures the feeling of standing outside in a thunderstorm, soaked to the skin, overwhelmed, yet completely present. It’s that sensation of being flooded with something too big to name, of holding still in the middle of it all. That’s how reading this issue felt. It left me drenched in feeling. Awake. I hope it leaves you a little drenched too.

Kyra Donlon, Design Editor