Featured Illustration: Upasana Agarwal

Toeing the threshold between purgatory and reality.

My spirit runs insurgent in the forest of looming souls.

Torn from these nascent roots, Mary’s suckling lamb is distraught.

Convention dictates the adoption of identity markers.

Only this label is hopeless to the deciphering lens.

Like sloping hieroglyphics, it confounds the viewer and drives them to the edge of an abyss.

DNA dripping like pure, unadulterated gold, collected as pearls of precious tears.

Where am I?

As I gaze around, it becomes clear that I am trapped inside the murky haze of no man’s land.

Neither here nor there.

Born an insider, branded an outsider.