I am Raina Kreiser.

I have mother tongues in the plural.

Sometimes, I feel I am a trobairitz.

Nostalgia for me points not to any particular land, but to that bittersweet aphasia where all mother tongues merge. I am also those tender folds between one map and another, overlooked by navigators.

So I write.

It is, for me, both the wayside inn and the far shore.

It is the arrival, and it is the departure.

Writing is my way of confirming why I exist. In the gaps between words, I build my homeland that belongs to no longitude or latitude.

Every story I write is a cautious and brave act of naming. For those emotions that cannot be classified by a single culture, for those thoughts that quietly blossom on the borderlines.

I am fascinated by shopwindows. Because they are most honest.

They display dreams, yet draw the line between "there" and "here."

And I, forever, am the one standing on the bright street, gazing through them.

What I inherited is not the nationality in some passport, but this entire heartbreaking, beautiful posture of watching.

I am a metaphor born when countless distances chance to embrace.

A daydreamer and wayfarer who, with writing, thrusts herself between the world's sweet dreams and myself, yet keeps an eternal distance.

I can only hope that you, too, might find yourselves wandering into the dreams I weave.