Author: Ann Selene

There are so many ways that I had wanted to begin this piece, all of them much too cliché. Even so, all quotes are deeply true. The times we live in are incredible. Make of that what you will, incredibly good, incredibly bad, incredibly astounding, or asinine. All incredible, nevertheless. Over the past 11 days, I have been awe-struck by our mission back to the moon. When I say “our,” I mean humans. I have been watching NASA’s live streams, reading social media posts, you name it. And during this time, I am also preparing for my first major surgery.

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There is a particular sadness that does not come from loss. Loss has a clarity to it. Something was present, and then it was gone. But there is another kind of melancholy, quieter and more difficult to name, that comes from standing near warmth and realizing it was never meant to be yours. It is the feeling of watching a fire from a distance. The light is beautiful. The heat is real. You can see how it gathers people around it, how it softens the night and pushes back the cold. There is no doubt about its existence, and no

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I remember when my children were very small, preschool age, when every milestone felt like a ribboned gift waiting to be unwrapped. I delighted in each “first,” each new pencil held too tightly, each earnest recitation of letters and numbers. Preschool was a gentle joy. And then we arrived at Kindergarten. I could not have known then how deeply education would shape not only their lives, but my own. I taught my eldest from preschool through second grade, our days marked by phonics lessons at the kitchen table and history read aloud beneath lamplight. My middle child, I guided through

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You distract me —not suddenly,but the way heat gathers,the way a room slowly fills with scentuntil breathing itself becomes deliberate. How can one presenceso thoroughly inhabit another,filling every corridor of thought,until the wanting to writefeels like pressure —a swelling that insistson release? And when the ink finally comes,it does not hesitate.It spills —dark and generous —flooding the page,uncontained,as though the hand could no longer holdwhat the body has already decided to give. And as soon as it does,I am nothing buta doe in headlights —caught,motionless,lit from the inside out. I remain suspendedbetween two worlds. One is cold and subterranean —Siberia’s

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The Invocation: The Memory of the Near East I have always lived at the border of things. Long before I understood the migration of my maternal line—an ancient lineage that navigated the melting mists of the post-glacial Near East to find a home in the North—I felt their hunger for the threshold. I grew up with the weight of golden statues and the scent of ancient libraries, a keeper of lore in a modern world, sensing that my blood was a library I hadn’t yet learned to read. The Sacred Threshold (The Hidden Transformation) Recently, I found myself in a

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