Welcome back. We’re grateful you’re here.

There’s something dreamy about November. Maybe it’s the lengthening days, the darkening swoop of the sky as it folds down over the earth in a winter blanket. Maybe it’s the chill, for some of us, in some parts of the world, or the approaching resolution of another year. So many expectations; met, unmet. Masked, unmasked. We sleep longer. We imagine. We plan. This time of year is about the readying, the dreaming, the preparing; so much cozier and quieter than the blooming and bustling seasons that come before and after. 

We’re feeling dreamy this November. So dreamy, in fact, that we were a little late on the release of this issue. 

Happy November, in December. We’re glad you’re here.

In conceiving of the theme, Dreams, we thought, necessarily, of sleep. We considered the ephemeral, plots our brains concoct in their off-hours. Things that have yet to come to pass, but that we wish would be so. We imagined those dreams concrete and those that are still cloudy, hazy but emerging from the periphery of our consciousness. As is so often the case, when the work of our talented contributors comes together into an issue, we were struck by the brilliance of the dreams submitted.

November 2021 is bursting with color.

Maybe it is cold where you are, perhaps grey of sky or mood. But within the pages of Auxocardia, we’re dreaming and these are not black and white newsreel dreams.

This month, we’re in technicolor. 

Our featured artist, the talented Elizabeth Huuki brings us a Love Letter, warm and inviting, to open this issue. In A Home with a Dog, Annika Brakebill writes of dreams simple but universal. A place to belong, a place to be seen–Shaitalya Vellanki, Marvin Urias, and Kahin Na Kahin touch on similar ideas. These poets, in their respective poems, orbit around dreams of belonging; as a patient, provider, lover, friend. 

We are humbled to once again publish Anna Idelevich and Caitlin Irish, who bring us poems that are infused with the dreamy magic and promise of love. In Idelevich’s I’m running to you, darling, we are reminded of the spectacular luck, the heady realism of love discovered and kept. 

Tianyi Wang and Lucy Zhou reflect on the journey of dreaming; the concrete, the tangible, the bloody work of bringing the things we want into being. This is where the dreaming collides with the doing. This is where we decide if we have what it takes to manifest, as Zhuo does, to believe that, as she writes, “maybe this time, it will work.”

Our visual artists this month expand the dreamscape even further. Sparsh Jain takes us to outer space, Gargi Mishra to the edge between day and night, Payge Barnard to the windswept moments before a kiss, to solitude, and the dreams this state of loneliness invokes. Hanna Wright’s work, her portrait series, (be sure you scroll to see them all), needs little comment. The color and brilliance of her figures, their existence on the periphery of what we know and what we do not, speak for themselves. 

This year has been, for me, one of dreams both deferred and realized. Auxocardia has grown (we bring you our biggest issue to date!) and we are now funded, for the first time in our short history. 

Personally, I have seen one of my most colossal dreams come true this year, not without sacrifice or challenge, but with incredibly perfect, imperfect timing. I’ve seen, this year, just how big the world and how small the number of truly important things within it. My dreams have exploded, collapsed within themselves like dying stars and then expanded again like the universe we all call home.  I am hopeful, grateful, that perhaps there are more dreams to realize on the horizon. I hope this resonates with you, dreamer.

 We started this issue thinking of sleep, of dreams, of hibernation. Of meeting a grey, snowy November expanse with words and art to tide us over until the sun returned.

But what emerged was much beyond that, much more nourishing and on fire. 

As Anna Idelevich writes, “Maybe you will understand, we have not fallen asleep.”

We are wide awake, enchanted, overwhelmed with the everything of our dreams. We know you are too.

As always, friends, take care and be well.

-molly