Editorial by Heather Clitheroe
500 words, 3 minutes reading time
Issue 2 (Spring/Summer 2023)
Welcome to the second issue of Heartlines Spec—our scrappy little magazine with big feels. I'd like to imagine you're reading this as part of a pleasant sunny morning, or a lazy afternoon...or even during a sweaty commute home; if only because it means you're done for the day and heading home.
And maybe you're with people who are important to you—maybe these scenes have people in the background, or next to you, or pinging you. Or maybe not. For many of us, this summer is the first real 'after'—a season where nothing is at reduced capacity or two metres apart. Festivals are back, the theatres are full as everybody troops off to see Barbie and Oppenheimer, and you can't guarantee you'll get a table at the place down the street. The spectre of the pandemic hasn't left us—not really—but we've entered a curious time of compressed memories. What was I doing two years ago? When was that first anxious lineup for a vaccination? It's an oddly hushed memory of loneliness and aloneness— a sense that it happened to us, but not to us. Not really.
I teach creative writing to adults and teenagers, in different settings. They've begun asking when I think pandemic stories will be 'okay.' When can we write them? When will people read them? The answer to the first question is easy: write whatever you want, whenever you want.
To the second, I can only say that I don't know. I'm not sure.
This second issue of Heartlines Spec is not a pandemic issue. But I think there is a note of poignancy that runs through these powerful stories that fill the space in your heart with their feelings, these poems that grip your hand and whisper to you, these essays that lean forward, elbows on the table, to tell you something vital. It's a feeling of something that's not forlorn, not sad, not fluffy, but poignant—pain in the chest, funny flipflop heartbeat, and wistful smile with a shimmer of comfort.
Relationships come with poignancy built right in. The last three and a half years irrevocably changed so many things, but relationships were evident even in the most difficult of times. It's the friend who came with lukewarm Starbucks to sit in a parking lot because she knew I was alone, silly group chats, and the coldly odd video conference dinners, the neighbours waving from the balcony across the road. When can we write about those moments? I still don't know...I could barely write this.
What I do know—as I look through the proofing pages of this issue—is the touching, particular, and wordless language of relationships is what we'll use when we do. This language, that wraps around you and touches your soul, is felt in the way that our writers and poets composed their pieces for us to enjoy. They have created such a swell of feeling—it will rise to meet you, and it will carry you through these summer days.
And how lucky are we, the Heartlines Spec staff, to bring them to you?
The very luckiest.