What we discard says as much about us as what we choose to preserve. It reveals our habits, our excesses, our shame, our values. It gathers at the edges of our lives—out of sight, but never truly gone.
For this issue, we invited work that digs through what has been cast off or left behind. What emerged blurs the lines between waste and worth, ruin and relic, ugliness and beauty. These pieces sift through memory, grief, identity, consumption, the body, the natural world, relationships, and the many ways we are taught what to treasure—and what to throw away.
At a moment when so much feels disposable—truth, care, the planet, one another—this work insists we look closer. It lingers in the rot, the residue, the clutter. It asks what still pulses beneath what has been abandoned. What should never have been discarded in the first place. What we can reclaim.
The work in Volume 13 is sharp, strange, tender, unsettling, and alive. It invites us to get our hands dirty and reminds us that what is overlooked is often where the most honest reckoning begins.
Thank you to our contributors for trusting us with your beautifully ruined work. And thank you, as always, to the Fatal Flaw team for helping bring this issue to life.
