HUSK 1.2

Lemme ask you this: what binds you? Grief, insecurity, fear? Race, gender, socioeconomic status? Illness, obligation, addictions of all sorts? Maybe you’re just really hungry. Maybe you can’t stop waking up predawn and twisting and turning in bed. Maybe you really, really want someone to touch you. Sometimes it feels like too much, doesn’t it?

How do we get free? If I knew the answer to that, I would climb as high as I could & sing it as loud as my lungs would let me. But who can know what will free another person? What makes me feel free may do nothing for you. You can only try to free yourself and hope your own untangling will help untangle those around you. You can only love someone as well as you can and try not to trip them up in the ropes you drag behind you.

Lord knows I’m bound, but I’ve learned to find freedom in small moments of transcendence—a successful meditation attempt, a walk outside, experiencing music live & close, reading a stunning sentence, watching a fawn eat grass in my backyard—experiences that take me out of myself & out of time, even if only for the briefest instant.

It is my sincerest hope that you find such an instant as you read this issue of Husk. Many of the current contributors were invited by the contributors of the last issue—a practice intended to foster a creative community that will grow with each successive issue. Because how else do we get free? By engaging with others. Through moments of real connection in which we are not thinking of ourselves, or how many likes our Instagram post is getting, or what we need to get done for work tomorrow—but simply being with others, experiencing their presence, and offering them ours.

Let’s fucking do it, y’all. Let’s get free. (Also, probably, we have to stop buying stuff.)

Love you.

Liz