The week the pandemic hits, I break my lease in Little Haiti and drive fifteen hours up the I-95 to be with my parents.

What we need is a value system, and not just values. How can we create a system that helps us understand and structure our lives in a way that allows us to thrive by environmental design?

I am not. Two weeks or more since a call. To be in America, / You must see American, close your eyes and dream American

Every morning the sparrows sing / Every day there is another funeral

so let’s talk then about unruliness / how it defies the joys of order & everything / that’s missed.

Quail rise in ruffles from the sage. / Pebbles I scraped into my knee look / like they belong there.

Elsewhere a bell rings /medieval in its calling and here / I fumble for a reliquary

— or the ketchup packet one / over in the adjacent deli, the dearth of good strawberries / in produce.

In 1996, the year my mother died of a heroin overdose, Purdue Pharma started to sell OxyContin in the United States.

house become island, as inland pushes out / land. Outlandish, you say, this push and pull—

I / am ruined / how could I / ever leave / this wound

The form asks for / my job. Stay-at-home-parent, / a response given by the dozen, / lands wrong these months.

What hard truths do you need to examine about our current systems so you can see yourself more expansively in your own honesty?

TSW Art Director, Meg Sykes, on creating the featured image for Issue 13: Rebellious Joy

TSW Artist in Residence, Bianca Ng, on creating the featured art for Issue 13: Rebellious Joy