Laura Hershey, whose beautiful poem "Relationship" appears in this issue, passed away between submitting her work to me and my acceptance email. I cried when I discovered this, and when I read a little bit more about what an exceptional person she was, and when I re-read the poem, so resonant on this topic: "The body holds the soul like a lost love…"

Laura, I came to learn, was not only a beautiful poet. She was also an advocate for people living with disabilities, for LGBTQ people, for people whose voices too often get lost or drowned out in this cacophonous world. She was an artist, and an activist; she did what all of us in the literary community struggle to do, every day—to put words down that come together in a way that matters—and she did more. I am humbled to be in the position of publishing one of her poems.

So I said, at the beginning, that I cried. As a writer myself, I was sorry that she didn't get to know how much I liked the poem. And I was sorry to learn what we—all of us in this world—had lost. Most of all, though, I cried because that is what beautiful writing often does for me: it seeps into the cracks of my everyday tax-paying-kitchen-cleaning-go-to-work self and finds the tender core inside; it reminds me what is really important; it connects me to other people and the universe in ways nothing else does.

At Sweet, we're not all about the tears. We love to laugh, to play with words, to be buoyed by joy, to learn and to understand. But if something you read in this issue makes you feel like crying, I urge you to let the tears come. That words can do this, can open us up, is a blessing. "The body inspires the soul/to live, to live, itchy feathers and all."