This December, on the threshold between this year and the next, we are reminded of how winter not only turns our awareness towards the future, but also revives the past. It is a season of ghosts.

Memory itself can be a kind of haunting, a reconjuring of something, someone, or someplace otherwise gone. And yet, in recalling, we call back to us whatever we are missing. Issue Thirteen brims with these memories, of loved ones lost or growing into new selves, of places unreachable or landscapes vanished.

And yet, all of our contributors show how remembering is not only about bringing back what has been lost; remembering also creates beauty and meaning in the present. We hope this is what you will find as you explore these recollections, as you follow our contributors to pebble beaches and abandoned farms, to aquariums and roads at night, as perhaps you take some time this season to visit with ghosts still longing to be recalled.