Welcome to our twelfth annual Queer issue. The characters in these seven pieces reflect on the past and pursue the future, reckoning with loss and confronting desires established and new. Wanning Chen transcribes the memories of a Taiwanese butch lesbian, and Li Kotomi depicts an alienated preteen mourning the loss of a classmate and a connection. Olivia M. Coetzee’s trans woman watches street traffic and considers the lives intersecting with hers. Nina Bouraoui channels the roiling thoughts of a runaway wife and mother. Javier Stanziola’s protagonist reads a life-changing letter, and Colombian poet Raúl Gómez Jattin looks back at life and love. And Fahmi Mustaffa’s young Malaysian in Amsterdam navigates an unexpected detour.