Longing: An Aster(ix) Anthology, December 2024 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781942547235)

Longing is inextricable from desire, pain, grief. We can long to return

to a past, one where our fears, preoccupations, sorrows feel opaque in

comparison to the joy, love and ecstasy that make our lives feel whole.

The desire for what we cannot have. Or for what never was, never

existed. For the unfinished, the undone, a pause in the past.

In these works, we long for the opportunity to see the graduation

caps that never went up in the air, a yearning to be loved again, we

"remember the blood." A response to a job opportunity has catastrophic

consequences for a budding flower shop, a community is marked after

an unspeakable crime, a widow finds freedom in unexpected ways,

a daughter experiences inexplicable pain. We reexamine childhood

memories that have instilled shame and revisit mother tongues.