Issue 2: Dream Cycle

Tangled memories, blurring across glass. The absurd energy, the planets glowing behind your mind’s eye. How would you name the moon’s gravitational pull at your thoughts? The way time folds in on itself, the fabric of space surrendering to your quickening pulse. What do you search for at night?

What is your dream cycle?

Dreams are surreal, often unrealistic figments of our imagination. Yet despite this, science has wired our brains to create dreams while we sleep. We chose “Dream Cycle” as the theme for our second issue because we appreciate the science that works behind the scenes in every dream. In this issue, we hope to embrace surrealism, and allow the whimsical to coexist with the concrete.

Editor’s Note

Every dream is a gift to us. A brief glance into the liminal spaces between us and our subconscious. Some of us have kept dream journals over the years, writing down even the smallest details that linger in the corners of our mind, while others have forgotten the things they dreamt of. Like clockwork, though, our dreams follow us, and like poetry, they reveal something new about us with every fragment.

In Issue 2: Dream Cycle, we seek to celebrate both the odes and the elegies for the surreal, the blurry photos abandoned in train cars, the black-and-white films lost to history, the flickering fire and the long shadows, the moments you aren’t sure ever happened. The memories which seem to rotate in your mind, imprinting decades after you’ve forgotten them.

Issue 2 took a lot longer than I expected, and I would like to thank our contributors for sticking with us throughout these months; our vision could not have been achieved without their dedication. I would also like to thank the rest of the Blue Flame Review staff. Working at a lit mag is no easy job, and as many of us are students, it’s truly incredible that they managed to work around the busy schedules of student life.

Endless thanks to Adan Cruz as well—can we all collectively gasp and stare in awe at their stunning art? If anyone understands what Dream Cycle is all about, it’s them. Give them a follow on insta @slosh.ink!

And of course, thank you, reader. For nerding out about the science-y intricacies in writing. For coming this far with us. For being here.

Warmly,
Keerthisri Kannan
Founder & Editor-in-Chief,
Blue Flame Review