A Note from the Editor:

There are different sides of myself I show to different people. They bleed together in motion and come apart in calm like oil in water. These past three years, our existence has been reliant upon keeping ourselves at a distance from others. This separation has afforded me the opportunity to examine myself unexamined. Looking inward, I realized the parts of myself I love most are the ones formed through my relationships with others. The caterpillar that my roommates and I raised to a butterfly in the course of a semester. The eggplant parmigiana my mother and I make every year at Christmas while James Taylor croons through the speakers. The books and NHL clips my father and I talk about every time I call home. This issue of the Rappahannock Review marks a shift away from the fixation on our own isolation to focus instead on the connection we’ve been lacking.

In Issue 10.1 of The Rappahannock Review, our editors strived to publish pieces by authors whose passion facilitated bonds either between multiple characters or between characters and ourselves. The works we’ve selected for this issue explore the effects of connection and disconnection. Sage Tyrtle’s flash fiction piece, “Happy Elephants Daycare Center,” highlights moments of support in an Alcoholic’s Anonymous group, while John Nieves’s poem, “Ekphrasis on the Cover of Static Prevails,” reflects on the speaker’s isolation due to the desolation of a bar he used to frequent. The complex communities, families, and romances we read about while building this issue excited and inspired us. Our works exhibit various ways we share ourselves with others: through gifts in “The Train” by Randall Van Nostrand, through places in “Artefacts” by Jayant Kashyap, and through food in “Tomatoes” by Katelyn Tucker and “Sown by Lightly Touching Hands” by Asish Isaac. The combined final product is an issue that remarks on the ways relationships impact the trajectory of our lives.

These past three years have been universally lonesome, an unprecedented sensation since the beginning of the digital age. This issue, we’ve focused on the things that bring us together. The things that make us human. We invite you to read through these works in conversation with each other and to share them to start conversations of your own.

Grace Hopps, Editor in Chief