How can certain memories, in their swirling ephemerality, get so lodged inside of us that they dictate our everyday actions, decisions, and moods? Can we escape the destiny that seems hell-bent on repeating itself? How can we honor the past without living in it? Out of the shifting memories, can we step out and embrace the sublime newness and distinct uniqueness that each coming moment has to offer, embodying boldness in the movement of all living things to fly recklessly from the past into the future? The writing in this third issue of Wild Garlic explores the myriad ways the past can inhabit what is to come. 

In one piece in this issue, the speaker finds new freedom in breaking away from past traumas and complications of family life through physical movement and companionship. In another, time operates on a grander scale, calling into question our conception of “past” and “future” altogether. What is the future of human society to granite, to a glacier? 

Many of these pieces also hint at or name outright the dissatisfaction of writing: how insubstantial language feels compared against the roiling emotions that inspire it. How using the tools of communication to touch the past will always fail to perfectly honor it. Instead, something new must be woven to accommodate what was as well as what might still be born. 

We hope you will enjoy the work contained in this issue, in all of its haunted aliveness.