As a grassroots literary and arts magazine by and for black creatives, this issue is a part of our effort to express solidarity with our comrades who are fighting to tell stories of our culture, suffering, and resistance. The magazine you are holding features work from black palestinian, sudanese, and american writers. these stories are as vulnerable as they are striking—revealing a rich black diaspora who has sustained hope, despite unspeakable suffering, for a liberated and just world.

The “bloom,” or our version of the coming of age story—the silence, the sensation, and the speaking—is the narrative thread running through our first print magazine. Every element of the magazine you hold in your hands has been created and edited by a community of black storytellers. We have woven these stories with our hands to hand them to you. hold them, reread them, and evaluate the corners of your own cocoon. Your bloom season is coming.

This issue was created by an editorial team of Black lesbians with the intention to explore the expansiveness of our identities and pay homage to our ancestors. In a culture that is obsessed with placing Black people into limiting roles and stereotypes, Black queerness—more specifically Black lesbianism—is vastly underrepresented and misunderstood. It is our right to tell our stories, so if mainstream media and literature won’t represent us with respect and candor, we will create the space to do so ourselves. The issue you hold in your hands is one such space.