Cypress Magazine Issue No. 02 is finally here!
For the past several months, we’ve been building this issue around a single idea: rebirth.
Life doesn’t always change in dramatic moments. More often, it shifts through seasons of uncertainty, small decisions, and the passage of time. Forests recover after fire. Coral reefs slowly return to life. Deserts wait months, sometimes years, for the conditions that allow them to bloom. Looking back, our own lives often follow the same pattern.
Issue No. 02 explores the ways we are reshaped by the places we move through. Across essays, photography, poetry, and interviews, these stories travel from recovering coral reefs to California’s redwood forests, from dormant deserts waiting to bloom to the heart of Mexico in search of our roots. Together, they ask what it means to begin again.
As these pages came together, something else became clear. Cypress is growing through the creators who make it.
For the first time, this issue brings together essays, photography, poetry, and interviews in a single volume. Each contributor brings a different way of seeing the world, and this magazine is better for it. What began as a small independent publication has become a shared space for creatives, each bringing their own perspective and craft to these pages.
One of the greatest joys of making this magazine has been watching Cypress become a place where talented people want to contribute their work. This issue exists because of their inspirations, and it’s stronger because of the many different ways they see the world.
To every contributor, thank you for trusting us with your work.
And to everyone who purchased Issue No. 01, shared our work with a friend, or encouraged us along the way, thank you. Independent magazines only exist because people believe they’re worth making, worth reading, and worth holding.
Issue No. 02 is available now. I hope you find a story you’ll return to.
