One sad thing about the Letter From the Editor as form is that I never receive a reply. So I’ve begun constructing the image of a child-sized, glow-in-the-dark reader in my head. Importantly, this patient reader has a mouth, and sometimes, we buck this whole epistolary exchange and talk to each other like guys. Face to face. 

Patient Reader: What’s the most beautiful moment of your life? 

Me: Here’s a good one. In high school, my friends and I would regularly try to trespass into abandoned buildings, and you’d be surprised how many you can find on bodybuilding message boards and necromantic blogs that haven’t seen updates in years. 

PR: What’s one thing you can’t live without?

Me: We tried to research, but we had exhausted our sources, and we were restless. We kicked out to a sanitarium about fifty minutes southwest. 

PR: Do you have any guilty pleasures?

Me: There, we start looking around, and sooner or later, a cop car pulls around one corner of the complex. We emerge from the basement of this sanitarium like hibernating mammals. 

PR: Do you have a secret talent?

Me: Then there’s this one, solitary moment. We’re standing at the mouth of this hatch to the surface. We’re waiting. The evening light slides off the walls of this world. A whippoorwill calls from the treeline. 

PR: Who’s your celebrity crush?

Me: Then, the cop’s bullhorn. Then, we cut to that treeline, and settle among wineberry and prickle bushes until it gets dark.

Lovingly yours, 

Charlie Nuermberger, EIC