The following text, written by Jihan—a thirteen-year-old who lives in Lombok, Indonesia, and is learning to swim and surf—has been translated from Indonesian, compiled, and edited for clarity.
Jihan
Not many of my friends spend time in the ocean. If they do, they prefer to enjoy it from the shore rather than swimming or surfing, because most of them don’t know how to swim. They know that swimming and surfing are difficult sports that take a long time to learn. We are also taught at a young age that the place is mystical, the sea is scary, and there are many monster fish that look for small children as sacrificial offerings.
It will be crucial to learn how to swim early to prepare for floods and tsunamis. I believe the biggest barriers limiting more girls from swimming and getting in the ocean is limited education and the cost of lessons. There is also a belief in many families that women don’t need to be active because their future husband will support them.
My story is different because my family supports me. They believe that success comes from perseverance and hard work, including in sports such as swimming. Other parents hold back because they think swimming is very difficult, requires a long process, and is expensive. I wish that more of my friend’s families would support them to get in the water.
My favorite part about surfing is being able to control my surfboard, steering it simply by looking in the direction I want to go. It has also taught me patience, courage, and how to laugh even when I fall over. My favorite part about swimming is the fact that it forces me to rely on my endurance, not only strength.
I feel very grateful for my mother, father, and extended family, who continue to support me. My dream is to become an international swimmer and also to teach swimming and surfing techniques, especially to the women of Lombok who live along the coast.
Maddy
I met Jihan through OceanFolx, my nonprofit teaching Indonesian women how to swim and surf. At just thirteen years old, Jihan is well aware of climate change’s impact on her community and the many barriers facing her as a young woman wanting to learn how to swim and surf. However, she remains determined to break this pattern and put herself out there in the surf lineup among the tourists and local men. She wants to earn her place in the waves that surround her home, instead of just being another onlooker from the shore.
I founded OceanFolx in 2023 after spending many years traveling between Australia, Canada—where I’m from—and Indonesia. After these experiences, I wanted to give back to the community. The idea for OceanFolx came after one of the first times I paddled out into the waves in Lombok to surf. I noticed the lineup was alive with accents and faces from around the world: women from Spain, Italy, and Australia; men from Germany, Brazil, and New Zealand. I saw Indonesian men too, but it was glaringly obvious what was missing: Indonesian women.
So I asked an Indonesian friend of mine, Misel, if she wanted to learn how to surf. She shared that she would but that she didn’t even know how to swim. Many women are busy at home, she explained, and swimming isn’t commonly taught in Indonesia because it doesn’t generate income and is seen as something for tourist women, who have more time on their hands. We are busy caring for our families and our children or going to work, she told me, so not many people can learn to swim.
Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world, with over 17,500 islands surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, and various Southeast Asian seas. Despite the ocean being inextricably intertwined with much of daily life, from transport to harvest, very few Indonesian women can swim.
Many Indonesian women do not have the time for themselves to swim or surf. Often, their mornings consist of helping their children get ready for school, feeding their family, and keeping their households clean and orderly, all before many also head off to work. Taking even an hour or two a week to learn a new skill requires careful planning and coordination. To indulge in a skill that does not earn their family money, such as swimming, is a luxury that many local women cannot afford.
Many of the women I work with through OceanFolx say they never learned how to swim simply because no one ever taught them. Although swimming is sometimes taught in schools, the facilities and curriculum are not standardized or prioritized as a major source of funding or attention, since swimming is not seen as profitable or of economic importance. At the same time, for safety reasons, women are often taught from birth to fear the ocean.
Drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide, accounting for about 300,000 deaths each year. About 30 percent of these deaths occur in the Western Pacific, a region that includes Indonesia. Accurate data on drowning is sparse, and even more so within Indonesia, where drowning deaths might be underreported given the lack of a national drowning data collection system.
But more general data on swimming ability is available, with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reporting that, in 2019, only around half of people over fifteen in Indonesia could swim without assistance. In contrast, countries like Sweden had near universal swimming competence.
The OECD report also notes that globally, inequalities in income and education create barriers to who has access to lessons and pool facilities, a challenge similarly cited by many locals in Lombok. In virtually all the countries it surveyed, the report also found that women are much less likely than men across education and age groups to be able to swim without assistance.
Locals also become more vulnerable to drowning with development-driven climate change. With more and more tourists visiting Lombok as an alternative to the overrun and heavily populated Bali, development is quickly picking up pace in the region. Many locals have been routinely evicted out of their homes, and many claim they have yet to receive compensation.
While increased tourism brings varied benefits to local communities, the associated growth in development and infrastructure has frequently been linked to worsening flooding in the area. As hillsides are stripped of their natural flora through logging and development, their ability to absorb rain is reduced. Just this year, severe floods across Lombok have forced residents out of their homes. In late 2025, flooding in Sumatra caused hundreds of deaths and displaced a million people in an event that climate scientists attributed to increased precipitation intensity driven by human-induced climate change.
At a time when tourism in Lombok is growing each day, understanding the nuanced dynamics of inequality in ocean access and safety is more urgent than ever. As tourists visiting Lombok, it can be easy to see the ocean as a surfing playground. However, for families like Jihan’s, the same ocean can represent something new: a place of opportunity and belonging.
]]>研究雨
沒有人能真正把雨的聲音研究徹底。事實上雨就像鋼琴一樣沉默。你只能等待雨。全世界最被動的鋼琴家不過如此。雨會選擇你。或選擇紙張。鐵皮加蓋。人工湖。流浪狗。或許專挑黑色的。等待那粒鋼琴向目標砸來——。唯有接觸才能知道它的天分。那天雨下得特別慷慨，彷彿是由某位天才瘋狂的作曲家負責工程，好比說，二十六歲的舒曼。雨像C大調幻想曲那樣全面地覆蓋，看不見的他，在那天看見城市完整的天際線。
沒有人能真正把雨的聲音研究徹底。杜爾仰頭看著灰色的天空。從一片髒兮兮的地方，翻出一張口袋，很快地又縮了回去。從裡頭掉出的碎珠子，開始向下墜，由0拉長到1，打中杜爾的額頭，分裂成其它八個數字。杜爾穿起雨衣，刻意保持距離。他感覺自己暫時躲進地底下。數字在幾毫米外低音量加減乘除。杜爾彷彿聽見蘑菇從土裡冒出頭的聲音。
Rain Studies
No one has ever thoroughly studied the sounds of rain. In fact, the rain is as silent as the piano. You can only wait for the rain. The most passive pianist in the world also waits like that. The rain chooses you. Or paper. A tin-sheet cover. A man-made lake. A stray dog. Or maybe it chooses anything black. You wait for the piano to strike the target real hard——. You know its talent only by the touch. The rain fell with exceptional generosity that day, as if it were the work of a certain mad genius composer. Let’s say, it’s Schumann, aged twenty-six. The rain shrouded everything like a Fantasia in C major, and he, who was blind, saw the city’s complete skyline that day.
No one has ever thoroughly studied the sounds of rain. Durr looked at the gray sky. He pulled out a pocket from a filthy place and quickly put it back into place. The broken beads that fell out began to fall, stretching from 0 to 1, hitting Durr’s forehead, then splitting into the other eight numbers. Durr put on his raincoat, and deliberately kept his distance. He felt that he was hiding underground, but it wouldn’t be long. The numbers added, subtracted, multiplied and divided among themselves at a low volume just a few millimeters away. Durr seemed to hear the sound of mushrooms bulging from the soil.
Taiwanese Mandarin source text reprinted from The Basement Tapes (China Times Publishing, 2024), with permission from the author and the press.
This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.
]]>Manscaping
In middle school ceramics, my teacher
mistook my turtle for a deformed teapot.
She punched a hole through its face
to let the water out. I made a temple,
too, but gave it blue ribs and a dome
without a mouth to let the whispers out.
Naked, a youth in a city square submits to
alchemy: tourists squeeze his junk and leave
a golden stain. An ocean away, I work to erase
our clients’ residue. The rasp of steel
wool and suds beard my wrist. I hold
my fortune under the water, which
burns the skin clean. Fluorescent light
congeals across my china-slick pores.
I am lacquered, no longer knowing
what color I keep beneath
today’s shoddy apron.
White Hair Silver Needle
It was like a graveyard if all the graves
were gone. It was like a yard but not
my yard anymore. I was like a grave
or a vacancy replaced. Like ashes
tumbling backward to the urn since
recycled to pot this new season’s
hope. I am not that hope.
I am one flower, crisp with its wilting.
No. I am only one oblique bud, dried
and curled to gather years—too young
to fetch attention, too withered to turn
the water green. Still, in water, I will open.
I will echo honey, when the water comes.
This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.
]]>The taxonomy of the data around me
was corrupted by the brutalist
architecture of my last
name. Some thought I was masquerading
as a placeholder, always desirous of something
more viscous in the cup I sipped till the corner
of my lips soaked by day with butter
bled dirty red by night. There were no
kisses. There were no fingers
intertwined, no ice-cream. The length of my
jeans shrank magically exposing my shins
to the low dust of the city’s urgencies.
My toe rubbed against a new shoe
in the ancient language of first contact.
I stumbled on the road, fell beside the glance
of a baby in a pram. I said sorry
always thrice like a prayer. The moment
I made a mistake I wanted to go
home and drink water. The well
behind the field behind
my apartment remained
covered with a lid covered
with moss. Years ago, it used
to be semi-open. Inside its pitiless
hollow, had once echoed
my name in the voice of my
friend. Soon after, she left
the country to pursue
a masters degree.
We were both the same
age then. I turned five
years older last night.
Today, I scented my eyes
with the young smoke
of pink birthday candles.
This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.
]]>Anemic green: jaded being.
What sweetness did bees and insects
suck out from your yellow flowers
as you tendril and cling on to a ripening fruit?
And what shade did the sun
bleach out of you as you torment yourself,
deformed gourd, and turn bitter?
To eat you, sliced or diced, and boiled over
to wean the yellow bile from within you,
your lament lingers on despite the garlic
and black bean sauce, rolled over shrimp,
minced pork and green beans in a wok:
you are still tangy to the crunch.
Ancient sages have warned about you:
even a China Rose would lose its sweetness,
fade and wither away when soaked
with water that has washed you over.
Though I enjoy your mild displeasure, spiced
with pepper and a bowl of rice, never
would I pour you over my rose bushes
lest lament should kill beauty.
This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.
]]>أحتاج إلى مفاجأتي العادية
هناك نوعٌ غريبٌ من السعادة يلوح في حياتنا بشكل غير ملحوظ، ولا يُنسب إلا إلى تلك اللحظات البسيطة التي لا نُدرك قيمتها إلا عندما تغيب. إنها المفاجآت العادية، تلك التي ليست خارجة عن المألوف، ولكنها تبعث في الروح شعورًا غريبًا بالفرح.
أحتاج إلى تلك المفاجآت اليومية، التي تأتي على شكل رسالة من صديق قديم، أو كوب قهوة دافئة ذات صباح خريفي هادئ. أحتاج إلى سماع كلمات غير متوقعة تثير في نفسي شعورًا بالراحة، كأن أحدهم يقول لي: “كل شيء سيكون على ما يرام” في وقتٍ يبدو فيه كل شيء ضبابيًا .
المفاجآت العادية هي تلك اللحظات الصغيرة التي تجعلنا نشعر بأن الحياة، رغم ضغوطها اليومية، لا تزال قادرة على مفاجأتنا بما هو طيب وبسيط. إنها اللمسات التي تجعلنا نبتسم دون سبب، مثلما يفعل النسيم العليل عندما يمر فجأة بين أشجار الحديقة.
في عالم مليء بالمفاجآت المعقدة، أجد نفسي أحنُّ إلى تلك اللحظات التي تبدو عادية للآخرين، لكنها بالنسبة لي هي مفاجآتي المفضلة. مفاجآت لا تكلف وقتًا طويلًا ولا تتطلب جهدًا عظيمًا، لكنها قادرة على أن تملأ يومي بفرح خفي، يجعل الحياة أجمل وتكون عكس ما هي عليه الان بين الضوضاء والانفجارات حيث لا مكان للهدوء ولا للخصوصية .
I Need My Ordinary Surprises
There is a strange kind of happiness that drifts unnoticed through our lives—
one that belongs only to those simple moments we fail to appreciate until they’re gone.
Moments that are ordinary—ordinary surprises, not extraordinary.
Still, they stir an inexplicable joy within the soul.
I need those daily surprises—
the ones that arrive as a message from an old friend,
or a warm cup of coffee on a quiet autumn morning.
I need to hear unexpected words that bring me comfort,
like someone saying, “Everything will be okay,”
in a moment when everything feels foggy and uncertain.
Ordinary surprises are these small moments
that remind us that, despite the weight of life,
the world can still surprise us with kindness and simplicity.
They are the fleeting touches that draw a smile without reason—
like a gentle breeze weaving through trees in a garden.
In a world filled with complicated surprises,
I find myself longing for those moments
that seem so ordinary to others,
but for me, they are my favorite.
They ask for nothing—no time, no strain—
yet they hold the power to fill my day with a hidden joy:
a joy that makes life more beautiful.
The very opposite of what it is now:
noise and explosions,
with no space for privacy,
and no space for peace.
This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.
]]>This piece includes mention of sexual abuse. Please take care while reading.
1. There is a world where you are born a woman and your body is the most beautiful uncomplicated thing about you. Everyone thinks this, even your cousins, one at six, and one at fifteen. Even your uncle, as good as your father after you’re orphaned. In the place of failed metaphors, does a door think itself a door without its hinges? What is a survivor without her body?
2. The year I turned twenty-four I fucked white men to forgive myself for having a body my uncle touched. They didn’t know of the fragility of recasting the body, ridding myself of fault in the dark.
3. It’s true, I used them.
4. It’s fine, they used me back.
5. Someone once asked if I wasn’t afraid that these men were strangers. She was asking about keeping safe. What’s the worst that could happen? Four times men loved me and hadn’t been able to help themselves.
6. The traumatised body relies on narrative. If a man thinks of my body as just a body I am free from betrayal. Once I hurt the man I love so irrevocably he asked to sleep on a blow up mattress. Can’t you touch me without wanting to fuck me, I spit. Once I was just a girl. Then I was a body.
7. One morning I found a bruise. Who or why didn’t matter. It was I who had let him into the bed. I who had let him lay his hands on my body.
8. One night, many years ago, I lost my hands. Counted all ten fingers but they just weren’t mine. When I went looking, I found them coiled around my uncle’s neck, still saving my life.
9. A year to the date of the first evening I fucked a man in the complete absence of myself, I am on a train to the first session of EMDR. I ask Therapist No. 7, will this save my life. I don’t ask, will it bring me back from the dead.
10. Only after too much had happened, I learnt about the correlation between trauma and hypersexuality. I read every article on the first five pages of the google search results. Once I started looking I couldn’t look away. The flashbacks began without the distance of the decade past.
11. Those years I lived inside of shower tiles and discoloured paint patches on the ceilings. If I could disappear myself into the five by five, it would end. I could live.
12. I haven’t slept through a night in months. I keep waking like a ghost at three in the morning, anxiety searing my throat. Friend, the terms survivor and victim are misnomers. I haven’t yet survived this. All definitions of victim are written in the past tense.
13. As kids my brother would use his entire body to shield mine in a game of dodgeball. My brother died. Last month my lover asked me for my body count.
14. I tell myself so many stories. None of them save us from the truth. These days when we are making love he reminds me to come back to him. He says, You don’t have to fuck your way to forgiveness. I know.
15. I do.
This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.
]]>Dad works near a lake and I pack pieces of bread for him to feed pigeons during his breaks. Mom cleans the kitchen. I practice roller skating on our white rug floors, when I take them out to the driveway to test my skills, I fall and skin my knees. A blood trail to the front door. I stained our carpet, it caused a fight because mom wants wooden floors for precisely this reason. She can’t stop sneezing. She puts me to sleep and I watch her leave and yellow light floods my room for an instant. Dad says she goes to work in a library, she’s taking a class. I think she goes to the woods and dances. I say something about it. I’ve followed her to the woods only once. I saw her. I think mom gets fun at night. I fell asleep in some leaves at the back of the house and snuck back into the window for morning shower.
I can tie my laces. Dad lost his smell. I believe in myself on my first day of the school year, and I notice two teachers talking in the parking lot during quiet reading and meditation time. I saw a child take a shit in the middle of the bathroom floor. It shook me to my core so much I stayed in the open tool shed for the rest of the day. They couldn’t find me, then they found me. I think I was yelled at. Dad picked me up and we fed birds while he smoked. I’ve been to a cold city only once and when I breathed, I breathed hot air like dads smoke, and that felt good. I have good posture and I know how to sew, but not in a straight line. I’m graduating soon and I’ll be off to a different school on a yellow bus. It is meditation and quiet reading for the last time. We move next summer.
I am in high school and the female teacher who talks to Mr. died. I talk to him after school and in the evening. I write him letters and read the books I need to, so I can talk to him more. Mr. was transferred. He tried to convince my mother to let him give me writing and comprehension lessons at his house alone. My mom said no. I don’t know why. Mom left a tool with his name on it on the kitchen table. I didn’t move it and she put it away. I can leave after couscous and spinach to meet with K. I came back home bleeding. Mom set our picnic table on fire by mistake while her friends were over. I don’t understand what this means. I don’t know what she does. As long as she does it I can keep doing what I want to do and that is good for me. She doesn’t discipline. Dad picks me up from school with an opened bag of chocolate and gifts me an iron fish because iron is good for women. I say thank you and everything is filtered through my restlessness to see K. The house is empty most nights and there is little to talk about. Nothing is clean and nothing gets made. I don’t read. The police come to the door because a cat has hiked up the tree in our front yard. K loves me and mom smells like a bonfire and has lost all her friends. Dad gets a girlfriend and she’s the female teacher who I thought died. She is attractive and K tells me he thinks so too. They both run off together. Dad and I get broken up and we get sad. I see dad less and I am done with high school. I am no longer into any of that stuff and I move to a cold city and live normally. I am regretful and I talk to a room of people about it each week. I join classes. I make companions, and make love to normal people, very normally. I make my apartment bed and hang up clothes on hangers, who hang on the frieze of my wall, to dry. Mom dies, her funeral is big. I don’t really know any of these people except dad. I pick up smoking. I pass dad a piece so we both have bread to feed the birds.
This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.
]]>In this language, so many words
for hurt. 속상, meaning your insides
are rotten. All that twisting and churning,
those sinking pebbles you keep inside
like loose coins, lost teeth. Hurt made
flesh and eye and soft tendon, limbs
melting into the restaurant booth, knotting
into another body. 속 상
like another hour past closing time, like
the burns that stain Eomma’s wrists or the couple
arguing in the laundromat next door. 속상
like their drooping dog, like our heads resting
against the grooves of popcorn walls, our skin
remnants of disaster, skin expansive as planets,
hydrogen and helium, atoms the moment
before they’re split into strangers,
속상, the rot inside we call hurt,
call leaving, call ours, ours.
This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.
]]>This blue china body marks dead
lobby space. Acrylic cubes protect
silent white polish from all lively
passersby. Proper men once called me
Vessel of former awe. Maybe
past life earned prestige’s gaze; from ruler
and diplomat, from patterned women
all around. Back then, joy engulfed
dining halls, crushing us lucky
strangers amongst humming tables. We
stored sweet refreshment – baijiu, rice
wines – vibrating within walled stories
frozen to patina’s gleam: flight of birds,
pine tree and pagoda, quiet
cloaks on the bridge. Now, painted face
and I stare past worth. I remain
chipped at curved lip, base smoothed through
back-then’s pleasant use. Now, I’m worth
what few glances gather. Dear Bored
Witness: free me! make slim use of
my stirring expanse! I cannot
remain empty-bellied, earning
blank decadence, wasting
small labours and all I’ve ever known.
This piece is part of the Summer 2026 issue.
]]>