Up and Over: Litmosphere Spring 2025
Up and Over is a memoir of a significant day in Blanca, ES in December 2023. The experience felt touched by the mystical realm in a way that astonished me at the time, and has left its imprint on me ever since. Moments of magical realism, especially during identity transition, may appear as emmisaries that help us confront fear and desire. I decided to share this particular experience in the hopes that it can confirm other queer peoples’ moments of entering paraworlds. This piece is pubished under the name of my paraworld avatar, Leo Croff.
Excerpt:
"After about thirty minutes on the trail, I finally take a momentary break, reaching the farthest point I’ve explored. Yesterday, this is where I turned around, saving the next teasing summit for later. I recognize the oddly jutting slabs that create a messy barrier in the path, like a shelf made of teeth. A sizable cairn shows that others before me stopped here too, if only to quickly add a rock. I pick up a dusty pebble and easily balance it atop the pile. And just now it dawns on me that I: a) am low on water, b) have no cell phone service, and c) didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I hover over the edge of a protrusion, scanning for the continuation of the path in rubble beyond. I shimmy down a gap between the jutting stones, and see that from the underside, the long row of toothy formations are shaped like oyster shells, all sticking out at a perfect 45-degree angle. I tilt my head so that in my vision, the massive shells rise up at a plumb perpendicular, the rest of the world slanting uncannily around them. The warped view draws my lips to a smile; I’ve crossed into a surreality where orientation and gravity clash, my tilted vision creating a new Mount Shasta. Looking over my shoulder, I become certain that the boundary of the shells is a one-way door, sealing itself behind me. The path reappears below the shelf as a small descent, before sweeping up into the next hill. Got to go down to up. Got to go forward to go back again.”
About Litmosphere:
“Litmosphere is a publication of Charlotte Lit Press, the imprint of Charlotte Center for Literary Arts, Inc. (“Charlotte Lit”).
It seems the literary journal world has become an immense and sometimes less than friendly landscape for writers seeking to find homes for their work. We’ve envisioned Litmosphere as an oasis in the desert of long response times and impersonal rejection notes. As writers ourselves, we know submitters are putting real skin (thick or thin) into the game and deserve our full attention and respect. We strive to make meaningful connections with potential contributors, regardless of our ability to include their work in a particular issue. That desire to connect carries over to a preference for readers to more deeply experience authors’ voices by publishing together multiple pieces from the same writers. We are interested in work by all writers, and are particularly eager to receive submissions from those historically underrepresented in publishing. Finally, we’re committed to crafting a nourishing, visually appealing, easy-to-navigate journal.
Litmosphere is for lovers of image and metaphor, writers and readers as curious about inner experience as driving narrative. It’s a place readers can easily dip in, read a piece or two, but our goal is to curate content and design a reading experience that makes you want to linger, luxuriate in rich language, reconsider the world and your place in it.”