I used to think my words were important. I used to dream about crossing borders and closing distances

with my words. Reader, I thought they could save me, and they did, but how much of anything can a word save? How much can I save with my words? I ponder this while across the country, students like me are being arrested, forced to concede, and threatened with expulsion for standing up against their hypocritical institutions and calling for divestment. Educators who stand alongside their brave students in the very institutions that praise democracy and holistic advocacy are being silenced and ferried away in police cars. Every day, I hear about these heroes. Every day, my school district remains silent. Every day, I discover yet another genocide-supporting peer. A week ago, a friend told me she did not know what Gaza was. How lucky we are to call it "the thing in Palestine?" I cannot save anything with my words. 

But while curating this issue, I am reminded of what it means to be human, alive, and a member of the

continuing world. This is no original epiphany, nor is it a reach toward closure, but there has been and will always be a revolution in creation. Throughout these months, I have felt my body harden into stone; my heart struggling to pump an ounce of anything worth mentioning. But with each of these pieces, these attempts at looking at and into ourselves, mapping out the quotidian joys of waking up in a warm bed, and taking a snapshot of the ugliest parts of us, some part of me is saved. From Theo Zucker's "Henry" encapsulating the ceaseless hum of grief and passion to Lisa Morovic-Kimball's "Miss Pudding Doesn't Work Here Anymore," a gorgeous and hilarious play that cracks open vulnerability with laughter, I am reminded of individual power and the agency being a creative holds. These are trying times, reader. We must find power in all of the areas we never thought we could muster it from. Art is in intense conversation with politics and the word is slipping further away from me as I speak. But I take good looks at "the stars / so barely held / in by my body," as written by silas denver melvin in "the sick poem," and serve whatever words I have left in a fist. I urge all of us creatives to do the same. Please, continue creating. Please, continue reminding us that we are human. This is Issue 6 of Hominum. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

 

ALL EYES ON RAFAH.

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Sincerely,

Evan Wang

Editor-in-Chief