Here we are at another ending.

The end of another Spring, rainy and blossoming, over too soon. The end of another semester, fingers stained in blue highlighter, minds bent towards impending ceremonies and celebrations. For us at Touchstone, it is the end of another year spent with words, many of which appear in this expansive collection of poems, stories, essays, and art.

When I encounter endings, I tend to get contemplative—a bit pensive, one might say. I tend to lose myself in memory, and right now, I’m remembering these words about words from Anne Carson: “Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.” She may have been talking about Greek poets, but when I try to think of words that represent the work in this second digital issue of Touchstone, I can think of no better description: these words bounce.

But that’s not clear at all, is it? So, instead, let’s consider joy. Consider how erratically it moves through Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith’s capacious poem “Compare This,” or how it energizes a nighthawk’s hunt before the farmer raises his “leadlovin’ shotgun.” Consider how joy restores us through travel and friendship, or how it infuses the ancestral memory of Devin Miereles’s grandmother, Avó, in “How a Picture Tells a Life Story.”

Consider pain. Consider the ratcheting pressure in SH Ong’s “Green Light Go,” tumbling through many precipitous relationships. Consider the wilted atmosphere in L. Vocem’s “City on Water,” apocalyptic and decaying. Consider how pain reverberates, like radio waves, across Jim Crow America, how it pulses in the “flushed and tawny cells” of an unhoused boy, or in a destitute mother, forced to extremes to provide for her son, in Anisha Bhaduri’s “The Refugees.”

Consider love. Consider the visceral, embodied memory of lost love in Danae Younge’s “Bird ● Bones,” “like a marrow toothpick in my palm,” or that brief glow of momentary reunion in Zachary Slingsby’s “Horse Graves.” Consider the fuzzy dissonance of love in Rebecca Watkins’s “Blonde Sugar,” or its elusiveness in a tender portrayal of queer community in the late 1970s. Consider the love we hold for our families, both the ones we build ourselves, and the ones we grew up with, like the proud, resilient father in Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer’s “Russian Interlude.”

Joy. Pain. Love. These are just three of the words that bounce throughout Touchstone 2022. There are many more to encounter. While you’re searching, be sure to spend a few minutes with the art we’re featuring in this issue—the works, including our cover art, Diamante Lavendar’s “The Illusion of Control,” are just as rapturous as the writing they accompany. And, of course, please don’t forget to celebrate the burgeoning talent on display from the undergraduates at our very own Kansas State University.

Here we are at another ending, one that is entirely too bittersweet. The funny thing about endings, however, is that they are anything but. We’ve all heard the clichés: one book closes, another opens, and I have so many books to read! And you, dear reader, have an issue bouncing with words before you, waiting (somewhat impatiently) for you to begin.

Here we are at another beginning. Hello.