Dear reader,

As college students, many of us have lives that seem anything but hollow--our calendars are packed with meetings and deadlines, our dorm rooms are crammed with as many people as we can fit, each block condenses a semester of content into a month of concentration. And yet, despite being told that these are the fullest years of our lives, hollowness is something that many of us are familiar with. We’ve all stared at our emptied-out rooms at the end of the year, or lay in bed with a headache on Sunday afternoon, or watched someone walk out our lives like they were never there. Sometimes, these busy years of our lives seem to be emptying out faster than they can fill again.

Hollowness is an elusive idea. Something different from absence, something different from emptiness, something that can be painful or numb or freeing all at once. As the fall semester draws to a close, as we’ve settled into our routines on campus, many of us find ourselves sitting in bustling airports and bare childhood bedrooms or walking through a vacant campus. Hollowness is felt most deeply in the things that should be most full. And so in our second issue of the year, we wanted to know where that hollowness lies. These writers beautifully capture hollowness in a variety of places-- relationships lacking warmth, desires lacking direction, words lacking meaning, personhood lacking life. And despite the breadth of topics, each piece captures the same deep-rooted sense of hollowness that rings from its core.

We find that hollowness doesn’t always have to be bad. It can be resonant. It allows space for ideas and feelings to flow and expand, where something new and beautiful can make itself heard in the silence. As you read through this issue, we invite you to let yourself feel hollowness without seeking something to fill it right away. We encourage you to seek out empty shells in your own life, and to sit for a moment in the vacant space.

Thanks for reading!

- The Cipher Staff