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Mushrooms

Soil and wood, paint and stucco: different media occupied my time. And yet my hands hungered for the written word.

Slippery, time delayed a sentence, tabled a thought that would otherwise be grown into a tome.

Birds nested, plants grew, wilted, and sprouted again—all while I conjured life from a sandy tomb. I found myself working my mind, expanding it, letting the depth and coolness of the soil I tended take me into darkened rooms, a dusty attic primed to be cleared.

Dark bluish-gray rocks hugged the softened mulched mounds pocked with cacti, their overwintered pads plumping to greet the spring sun. Lizards shuffled beneath orange globemallow’s pollened cups, within which bees thrummed; thrashers crashed about the four-wing saltbush and swooped to snatch the occasional grub upturned by seed-searching pigeons.

All around, denuded earth had begun its repair.

Thoughts faded into the background, and with them ruminated past chapters—the passing glances, clandestine kisses, heartaches, heartmends.

From the limbs of the shaped evergreen—an upturned umbrella dancing in moonlight—wind-shattered chimes clanged in cacophonous asynchrony: a plaintive song to the approaching desert night.

All around, life continued to spring from the rot of others: mushrooms on a log.

***

We’ve been starved of unfettered life and peace; scouring ravaged lands pocked by broken promises of futures unrealized. A perpetual exhaustion. A perennial exultation.

When we sit and ponder, we’re free. With minds untethered to the next task, the looming deadline, dodging sycophants and narcissists, we escape inwardly—stretching muscles so accustomed to intentional atrophy through absorbing endless propaganda, narrowed, convoluted narratives justifying subordination.

But when our minds are free, we deduce, analyze, process, draw our own conclusions, and—for the bloated capitalist, the most excruciatingly terrifying step—take action: small or large, iteratively gradual or decisively sharp. In those fractions of thought, we are ourselves; we own our immediate future. 

And continue to grow through those decisions.

***

Even on the darkest mornings, birds still sing—having the courage to break the void, call to those unseen, and join the awaiting chorus.

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Threshold

Words had escaped me—the ability to bind them into narrative lost for an evening, a weekend, before months had blurred away as I raced toward an ever-distancing finish line that no one ever crosses. 

Since returning to New Mexico, I’d attempted to recover fragments of what I’d lost. But like piecing together a shattered mirror, the gaps in the mended portrait remained glaring—a distorted image reflecting what was and what will never be. So, in the wake of one life chapter’s grand unraveling, I identified the stronger elements that remained—the familiar, malleable threads to weave into a protective shawl to stave off the chill of yet another new beginning. 

Before I knew it, winter had set in; I wrapped into myself—and wondered what a pandemic-plagued future would look like, and where I’d be. And then, one day at my computer, I felt a sudden heaviness heaped upon my shoulders, and was exhausted, utterly depleted. I knew. Days later, awake in a pool of sweat, my legs on fire, head throbbing, I, again, wondered what future there would be. A week later, my legs felt extinguished; I wobbled less. Again, words escaped me.

Tolls climbed, the political landscape fractured further, and my apartment walls closed in—with each night punctuated by my neighbor’s drunken cry-moans bleeding through our shared wall, until, one night, I found him face-down in the front yard amidst scattered pots and broken plants: his downward spiral had bottomed-out.

I’d reached down, nudged him—asked if I could help him into his apartment. Glassy-eyed and somewhere far afield, he stared up.

“Oh. No. I’m ok here. Night night.”

I eyed a broken garden light’s globe slowly spinning atop the sidewalk, and tracked my gaze down the darkened windows of the adjacent apartments; no one, save him and one other tenant, remained.

Without prompting, he muffled into the dirt.

“I’m ok here.”

I sighed, turned, and walked back into my apartment.

I’m not.

***

GoogleMaps bellowed, “Make a u-turn!” as I pressed my ear into the phone, cradling it against my chin, and pulled up to a curb in an unfamiliar neighborhood—my loan officer waiting patiently as I scrambled to find paper in my glove box and a pen whose ink hadn’t been dried out by the desert heat.

I asked her to repeat the time-sensitive next steps and what I had to do to lock in my interest rate. A litany of figures and percentages later, I hung up, cut short my plans to deliver the cashier’s check for earnest money to the title settlement company, and headed home. Hours later, I’d e-signed another compendium of mortgage papers and completed a required online course for prospective homeowners.

For a year, I’d watched as houses around the neighborhood got snapped up by Californians, Texans, Washingtonians, New Yorkers, and Coloradans. Prices soared, and I challenged myself not to lose hope. As a kid, I’d envisioned living in a rambling Gothic mansion in the woods; as an adult, that Gothic mansion transformed into a 1977 RV. And while I’d worked on my RV and convinced myself then that I’d never again focus on a “sticks and bricks” house, my chronic pain made me recognize that insulation and hot water were not overrated.

Still, I remained conflicted. Private property and capitalism and all of the pervasive, unjust systems of colonialism were anathema to the future I wanted to help shape. I also knew that my current housing arrangement was unhealthy, and that, if I moved, I’d be paying as much if not more in rent than I would be for a mortgage—and would be in less of a position to help build community power.

I debated for months before recognizing that what I wanted to do was steward a home—hold space to create a nexus for community building and mutual aid—while taking care of myself. As with most decisions, it was an imperfect one—shaped by compromise and the reality of our times.

I knew snagging a property in such a highly competitive market was not possible for a single nonprofiter with little savings. So, I bided my time and trusted my instincts; I kept saving what I could and waited until the depth of winter—when real estate markets typically slow.

***

It was an odd-looking home that I first noticed on my way to physical therapy. Perched on a corner, it appeared architecturally distinct from the other low-slung, stuccoed forties-era homes—with mid-century lines and large windows. And it happened to be in one of my target neighborhoods; it seemed empty, and there was no sign in the yard. But one night as I scoured listings, it popped up. I wove through the virtual tour and stopped at the photos of the back yard: an expanse of sandy undulations bounded by a concrete block wall, with a small shed plunked off-center. I added it to a list of two other homes I’d come across, and reached out to my realtor. The next day, I walked through them all.

Crossing the weathered threshold, I didn’t hear bells chime nor did the clouds part; I didn’t fall in love. By the time I’d gotten to the home-touring stage, I’d begun humming a reminder to myself.

This isn’t a love affair. It’s an investment. Take your time. Make it count. Listen to your gut.

Viewing each home became a decidedly emotionless process—training an investor’s eye on the pros and cons each home afforded. And while I acknowledged charming aspects, I focused more on the main systems, flushed toilets, investigated cabinets for mold, and assessed its equity-building potential. I couldn’t get attached, and let a charming facade detract my focus from the skeletal roof, or a price point obscure the fact that I’d probably be a hate crime inside of a month. With my retirement wiped out in the early months of the pandemic, any home I stewarded would be both a community-building center and a reserve piggybank.

At the end of the day, I’d made a decision—on which I slept, before pursuing next steps.

Multiple inspections, negotiations, and bouts of second-guessing later, I walked into the title settlement office and sat opposite the officer—partitioned by a Plexiglas shield: a sign that the pandemic was far from over. I left with a binder of documents, and would receive the keys to the mid-century days later.

It was done.

I closed my car door and screamed—a mixture of joy and exhaustion.

***

Movies always made moving into a home appear to be a romantically fluid process: a little dusting and mopping and, suddenly, all of the boxes were unpacked and life continued. But the pandemic remained, and I wanted as few people traipsing through the house as possible; so, my Virgo self made trip after trip in my truck, and performed spot house maintenance as I could.

One night, I returned to my nearly empty apartment and heard the familiar sounds of my neighbor reeling from their latest bender: pots crashed to the floor and something shattered. And that was it: the final straw.

Minutes later, I dragged out my mattress topper, tucked JoJo and her crate into my front seat, and spent the early hours of the night settling into my new home.

JoJo sniffed every dusty corner while I, bat-in-hand, investigated the source of bangs and clanks coming from the utility closet. But instead of finding someone ripping out copper piping or a rabid raccoon nesting for the night, I became acquainted with my 20-year-old water heater.

I went back inside, pulled out my “to update” list and scribbled a star beside “hot water heater.” Shortly thereafter, I installed a new shower head and leaned into the warm spray.

That night, for the first time in months, I slept through the night.

***

Lamplight fuzzed from a corner of the living room and my avocado tree’s leaves danced alongside the curtains—heat billowing from the vents as snow drifted down outside the cracked, reliable windows and soaked into the parched desert floor.

For a moment, it was quiet—with JoJo tucked into her beloved blanketed bed down the hallway, and few cars buzzing along the avenue. As my knees pressed into the cold concrete pad and ground into the remnant linoleum flecks, I pursed my lips and whisper-sang a familiar song—a lullaby of sorts to make the hallway’s darkness and the blood-like stain I’d just uncovered seem less foreboding.

For whatever reason, I’d decided at 9PM on a Friday to remove the broken, likely asbestos-laden linoleum from an awkward partitioned section of the house that included a half bath and laundry area. And under one strip, an irregular stain radiated from beneath the baseboard. I paused and assured myself that, no, there definitely wasn’t a body stuffed inside the wall above. No way. Nope. Nope. Nope.

As timing would have it, earlier in the week I’d come across an old folio stuffed in a dark corner of the garage—and in it were meticulous records of systems updates; the original blueprints were tucked beside it, and included the workshop addition, where I sat in a pile of broken linoleum. Knowing it was a workshop, I kept scraping the floor. A few tiles over, there was a similar stain, and beneath more, others. It appeared that the workshop pad received a fair number of oil and solvent spills. I could deal with those with much more understanding than a decaying corpse inside a wall.

I reached the end of the linoleum, and swept up the aftermath. I ran my hands along the floor to free any stubborn remnants and dislodged torn note scraps tacked into the unpainted sheet-rocked wall; I wondered about their messages—for whom they were reminders. Behind me, in predictable cadence, water dripped from a stripped valve into the washer’s outflow basin.

Another to-do.

The house was built in 1958. I’d probably never know how many people lived here, called it home—celebrated, mourned, and just existed within it.

Now, though, it was my turn.

***

Seeds clung to the stained paper towel scrap—stored in an old hair conditioner bottle during my time in Alabama; I’d remembered folding them into one another, a vessel tightened with hope and a longing to be reopened as another, more fruitful chapter was being written.

I tore off a corner and sunk it into the warped raised beds I’d brought over from my apartment.

Wind danced through the chimes hanging from a rusty eye hook set by a former tenant—someone who may have peered over the sandy backyard and tossed one of the hundred or so cigarette butts I’d collected and tucked into old, sun-bleached Cheeto bags along with broken glass and rusted car parts.

Around the sawed-off bases of the last tenants’ ad hoc windscreen, desert globemallow grew in tiny tufts. I mounded berms around each patch until sections of the backyard looked like a mole went berserk. But within each depression, flecks of green cast small shadows against the sand—as ants scurried beneath and finches and doves eyed me suspiciously from overgrown branches.

Out from the sand I’d cajole and shape a mini ecosystem, one that I hoped would bear fruit for me, the community, and my feathered and scaled and insect neighbors.

For years, I’d felt trapped; my mind clouded with darkening, fragmented thoughts: jagged edges curving inward, making a circle—a maze navigated simply by a mouse or linear ruminations, flowing along a predictable, entropic path. After multiple setbacks, I’d minimized my voice and goals and vision for the future to a collective point of obscurity.

As the sun cleared the last of the neighbors’ roofs on its downward track, I stood with my toes in the sand, and acknowledged that there’d be many more twists and turns ahead. And that, of the many voices in this world I imbue with power, mine must be one.

I took a deep breath, smiled at JoJo laying out on the heat-emanating patio.

You’ve got this.

Back inside, I tuned the radio to a familiar station as Beyonce’s Halo queued up. It’d been an ode to self-care and self-affirmation—to which I’d listened repeatedly as I sat collapsed in a field across the country two years prior, having lost what I’d carefully built.

“I know you’re my saving grace. You’re everything I need and more…”

As the melody drew on, I rounded the corner into the hallway and caught a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror propped against the wall. My hair was a mess and my arms were tanned by hours of yard work.

After a few more lyrics, I turned out the light, a smile creeping across my face as the light’s mirrored refraction dimmed and the room grew dark.

***

Sweaty, I drove across town in my dented pickup with one mud flap and three hubcaps and a crackling speaker that zoned in and out blaring a horrible pop song that I hollered out the open windows. I coasted through my old neighborhood, past the darkened rooms where I used to live, and rolled to a stop.

The speaker crackled a new song to life, and I flicked the turn signal—and rattled down the avenue, into the night, back home.

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A Stranger Pumpkin

January

Midnight and morning jockeyed beneath the moon’s watchful glow as JoJo pitter-pattered through inky shadows toward the abandoned schoolyard—where a wind-shredded butcher paper sign reading, “We Miss You,” smacked against rusted fencing: a siren call from contagion, or slow applause for our approach—meanings blended within hollowed, desolate spaces.

JoJo nosed around a grand cottonwood’s trunk as I attempted to stave off sleep’s departure from beneath heavy eyelids—longing for still warm sheets blocks away as steam-pulsing pipes running along the school’s facade conjured an equally welcoming image of boiling coffee.

Fully spent, JoJo pulled back toward the empty streets slicked with frost as we ambled back to our lit porch—her ears pricking into the wind, toward a nebulous form galloping down the asphalt. But before I could stoop to gather JoJo, much less to reach for my pen knife, the coyote barreled past—stopping momentarily at the school’s gate to cast its yellow eyes upon us in quiet consideration before slipping between the posts, melting into darkness.

I turned the deadbolt and tucked my shoes away, and angled toward the bedroom. Pillows curved around my temples, pressing long-uncut curls into my ears.

And then, as sleep lapped against my lids, a haunting coyote yowl echoed along the empty avenue—rousing a canine chorus from neighboring houses, to which JoJo lent her voice.

Coffee it is.

***

February

The small hand washer bucked back and forth as its soaked contents slopped around. Back bent and neck tensed, I attached a tube to the washer’s underside, letting the soapy water trickle down the bathtub drain.

Outside, the sun shone brightly, but the air blew cold, chilling my ears.

Neighbors’ laundry clung to the rusty cables stretching between corroded, T-shaped anchors. And as I added mine, I felt us all slip in time—reminded of the subtle luxuries we’d enjoyed, each of which the pandemic continued to bring into startlingly sharp relief.

An hour later, with my tees frozen rigid, I chided myself that I still had a lot to learn.

***

March

There would be no more parties, not that I attended many anyway.

Like most, I’d cajoled my mind into supposing that each day was guaranteed by virtue of waking into it—that the nightmares or fanciful dreams into which I’d descended the previous night would not be my last, that my breath would not escape in one final gust, leaving my husk to bloat beneath the sheets.

And yet, knowing that I’ll never be gifted with the foresight to know the quiescing time of my demise, I’ve continued, like so many, to grind out my life, like a cigarette blunted and snuffed, at the altar of capitalism: overly consumed with getting ahead, of managing every step as though it were part of a carefully orchestrated ballet. 

Each day, as the toll rose—families fragmented, communities decimated—it became all the more obvious the odiousness of the system to which we’d sacrificed: grasping how much we’d inflicted upon our bodies—aching bones and ground teeth and shooting pains about the wrists and dull, persistent knots down the back.

Still, amid it all, there was a demand for more.

***

April

The walls behind my headboard seemed to breathe, through plaster and desiccated rat carcasses: the cloistered air musty.

Or maybe it was my neighbor’s failing body struggling for air, reaching down into what was left of their lungs for the next gulp—pulling from the darkness any semblance of a future, arcing toward morning as the police sirens faded. Or perhaps they were talking in their sleep to a nonexistent lover.

Protracted solitude had a haunting effect.

***

May–August

It was a gift of memory, one of warmth.

He’d delighted in watching me lean into the shower’s steaming spray, the water spiraling though my curls, beading along my shoulders—muscles relaxing and toes extending along the basin, reveling in experience.

Rarely did I fully grasp the enormity of those moments—of sharing intimate space, the joy of the mundane—until after romance ebbed.

But perhaps that’s how it’s supposed to be, so that there’s something to smile about years later, as you bid another lover goodbye and welcome, again, your own faithful reflection.

***

September

They wore a smoky cat-eye that pulled attention from their mask. Creased at the corners, their eyes disclosed a smile, and I reciprocated. 

“Well, anyway, I have leftovers a friend brought me from her family.” They’d framed the remark as an embarrassing admission of imminent solitude—of being, like many, with themselves for the evening.

And I found myself stifling a chuckle—not at them, but at the predilection so many have fostered: that spending time with your quieted self-conversations was a ruse—a manifestation of deflected adoration; in those moments, I’ve come to recognize that I’ve kept far worse company.

Because who I am and who I’m creating, nurturing, and empowering are not so dissonant that they cannot be reconciled within the seasoned sinews of my heart.

***

October

I plucked the pumpkin’s rotting hull out from between neighbors’ garbage bags: a sunken smile collapsing in on itself and taking with it two asymmetrical eyes—right into my compost bin.

I mused that it might be the afterbirth of a fairytale from which a carriage might spring along unfurled tendrils.

Or perhaps it wouldn’t change into anything; perhaps it’d transformed already—as midnight’s toll struck long ago.

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Boomerang

Adobe walls, still warm from the desert heat, presented fall’s chill with an acquiescent compromise: it may lay claim to the morning, but the beating sun still held the day.

Condensation wicked down the sun-clouded casement windows as a great metallic monster heaved beneath the irredeemably dirty wooden floor. And with it, the smell of crisping dust drifted through the bedroom’s doorway. Joanna straddled the threshold, her ridged back facing me as I emphatically reminded her that the floor would not devour her—as it had refused the nights before. Still, she stared at the heater grate skeptically; the apartment had not been cold when we’d arrived mid-August; but now, as the occasional snow-glutted clouds cluttered the sky and wept voluptuous flakes, the aged beast clanged to life. And each sizzled pulse that rose from the floor reminded me that I was far from the life I’d carved out inside my ’77 Beaver motorcoach months, a lifetime, before.

New Mexico’s pull—a persistent siren call—came unexpectedly, quickly, and demanded to be heard, over six months after I’d left the desert’s beautiful austerity for greener, more humid surrounds in the Deep South. But there, in the middle of the Alabama woods—having faced the unceremonious obliteration of each of my relocation plan’s carefully crafted stratagems—I’d answered the job offer with a mixture of seasoned caution and anticipation.

“I accept.”

***

Two weeks after I hung up with my new boss, I’d barreled past New Mexico’s welcome sign and murmured into my packed back seat where JoJo sat—peering out her crate at the wide open blue sky.

“Well, Little Bean, let’s try this again.”

I pulled into an abandoned gas station, peed into a bottle, and emptied it across the parched earth. Stretching, I lathered hand sanitizer across my dry, reddened knuckles and reached in for the coffee thermos I’d filled when I left Alabama, and pulled a long swig.

My eyes were heavy after leaving my friend’s driveway in Oklahoma—the night’s sleep continuously interrupted by rivulets of sweat trickling into my eyes; the summer’s heat and the cloistered air within the car had commingled to evidence the pandemic’s stifling grasp, overtly arresting society and planting deep within our collective consciousness the paranoia of imminent decay, the necessity of distance.

I stared across the reddish brown undulations—hints of sandy, rocky hills.

Am I really back?

Hours later, Albuquerque sprawled ahead, and the conflicting emotions of excitement and loss coursed through my veins as I passed the exit I’d taken to my ex’s home countless times before. Instead, I pulled into a weathered extended stay by the interstate, sidestepped a meth deal being made on the staircase, and introduced JoJo to our temporary lodging.

Thoroughly unimpressed, JoJo nestled within her blankets and fell asleep. After splashing water on my face, I acknowledged a bloody thumbprint just below the bathroom light fixture; as tired as I was, its presence hastened me out the door in search of an apartment.

Days later, I opened JoJo’s crate and watched her pitter patter across the apartment’s chipped, black-and-white checkered kitchen floor, before settling atop my foam mattress topper in the bedroom. Nary a stick of furniture to be had, I boiled water on the stove and cradled the steaming mug of instant coffee as I sat in the front doorway—my bare feet splayed across the cracked concrete porch floor, my mask dangling from an ear.

Wind purred through the railing—carrying with it a lens of sand that settled across the uneven, pocked surface and tickled my heels. Exhausted, I let my eyes wander across the barren front yard and the cool concrete—until they rested on a clump of dried leaves harbored within a dusty porch corner. And as the wind chided those discarded skins to flutter upended, I felt the brittle fragments of past lives—the strange and curious people I’d been—alight, cradle me, and propel me to chart another course: reminding me that each song need not be a ballad, every note a love story, one performance a triumph, that smattering of paint across canvas a masterpiece.

Creation can simply break the silence, heave me out from a monotonous rut—onto a different path not etched it stone, but freely forming and porous. Like the sand beneath my feet.

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Waste Not

Death hung in the acrid, cloistered air—the heat outside rising, the humidity increasing by the second.

I stepped into Bertie and over the carefully organized pile of repair supplies, and then removed the cabinet door beneath the sink.

The trap worked. Glazed, cold eyes stared back. Lifting the sprung lever, I extracted the field mouse and deposited the body in the high grass; I whispered an apology, and scraped the remainder of the blood-splattered peanut butter from the activation plate before re-setting it.  

With Bertie airing out, I took a seat on the rusting front step and tossed my gloves onto my ad hoc deck—the remnants of broken deer stand platforms I’d collected from the woods. I rubbed together the calloused valleys that bisected my palms and gazed ahead over the growing garden: a pastiche of thick okra stems, glistening tomato tendrils, leafy bush beans, and leggy carrot tops. Very few components of my plan to return to the Deep South had unfolded successfully—but the garden did. And there, I often found myself contemplating the alien context in which I found myself—the frustrating liminal stage where I continued to be thwarted in making inroads toward my goal of off-grid tiny living. 

***

A few weeks after arriving in Alabama, and following a series of torrential downpours, I lay inside Bertie—feeling the comforting familiarity of my tiny home. Given the recent spat of severe weather, I’d opted to stay with my parents in their off-grid home—with Bertie parked uphill. I welcomed warm showers sans flip-flops and running water; JoJo became an immediate fan of consistent air conditioning.

But as I rested my head on my pillows, I recognized something was off—an unshakable dankness seemed to pervade every breath I took.

I reached behind my makeshift foam headboard, and down to a storage nook where I’d stowed my collection of journals. My fingers pressed into spongy, soggy paper and rotted wood. My heart sank: I ripped off my sheets, and tossed the headboard to the floor, recognizing the unmistakable mold stains streaking its backside.

No, no, no.

Fully exposed, the bunk wall appeared water-buckled and bloated. The journal nook had been completely inundated with water—a moldy film formed over the warped covers, random pages sloughed from the bindings.

One by one, I opened my most precious possessions. And the ink bled. And my world grew deathly quiet—save the low moans from the past, clawing out of my throat, drifting into the present. Pages saturated, moldy—streams of consciousness blended together: palimpsests of cherished memories—where my nine-year-old self met a teen met a twenty-something, met me in that fractured moment.

Frantic, I flipped to life-anchoring entries; I thumbed to September 11, 2001—the pages disintegrating beneath my nails.

Bordering water stains, few lines were legible: “Something terrible happened”; “I don’t know what’s next.”

I repeated the lines over and over—their resonance painfully acute.

Something terrible happened. I don’t know what’s next.

Over the ensuing weeks, I tore the bunk area apart. Cold, corrugated metal heaved with each tug; pink insulation fluttered down from a rotted hole in the ceiling. I had no idea how I’d piece everything back together, or if I could. All that remained of the walls were splintered, jagged edges. I couldn’t shake the sense that I was literally deconstructing a dream.

So, this is where the end begins.

Days later, deep in the woods, Beyoncé thumped through my headphones as strawberry-coated Pocky dissolved across my tongue. My relationship of nine months had just been ended over email; as the pandemic unfolded and my plans unraveled, it’d been a crucial emotional anchor.

Angry, depleted, and spent—I leaned into the heavy sobs boiling out, my nose running, crows feet deepening—as the weight of the full moon rested in the crook of my neck. Midnight’s darkness seeped into my heart as I pissed into the woods—hearing, over the melody, coyotes yip and yowl: conjuring mischief.

Closing Bertie’s door, I lay along the dinette bench, and stared at the skeletal bunk above.

Solitude encapsulated a strangely romantic loneliness. And I couldn’t shake the sense that I had a homing beacon for worn out, empty things.

That life itself might be the nexus of intractable endings. And this was just the beginning.

***

Bertie heaved slightly as I propelled myself up from the step and ventured into the garden. Slowly, I untied the string hugging snap peas to their posts, and yanked the towering stems from the soil; virtually overnight, blight had spread through the mature peas. I draped the stalks over my shoulder, and tossed them into the woods. 

As I tidied the empty beds and stowed remnant plant ties, I scanned the upturned depressions where the peas had been, and snatched a dried seed head from a neighboring pot of marigolds.

I peppered the linear, sleek seeds into the furrowed ground, and glanced over at the withering pea strands at the woods’ edge. Just beyond, the high grass rustled from the beat of wings—and in a flash, the mouse’s body disappeared. 

From loss comes life—a vessel for change.

I smoothed a veil of soil atop the seeds—to let the earth decide if life might spring forth again.

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Forward

Don’t let your face become
Drawn,
pulled within, cold—
Inexpressive.

Let the sun dance at the
Corners of your eyes,
makeup caked in the creases,
The crows feet that connect
generations of laughter, 
heartache, and wisdom.

Conjure from within the fire that 
Flickers and wanes with the 
changing of the seasons: the pride 
of experience and compassion;
Let it grow and spread and 
Rage mightily for justice.

Find solace in your reflection:
a warrior’s presence.
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Fledgling

A murky haze settled into the hollow as cicadas thrummed from their perches among the layered canopy. Sunlight dappled the moist, fern-covered ground; I stepped carefully, eyeing my prize: a cluster of chanterelles peeking through the dense leaf litter.

Dirt-speckled, the mushrooms’ uneven, wavy caps cradled morning dew—soaking a few snail hangers-on as I gently nudged them onto the ground and tucked the orange blobs into my weathered garden hod. A few steps later, I startled a deer and watched it bound, crashing through high brush and melding into a thicket. Far afield, a turkey gobbled back at cawing crows.

I exhaled, and surveyed the mounded mushrooms. Cooked down, they’d last a meal or two—reminding me of the constant work it took to reap what I, or nature, sowed. Still, I felt a needed lift rise within me—what with the pandemic’s existential weight; racial liberation uprisings erupting nationwide; my bank account zeroing out; unemployment stuck in processing limbo for months; my business venture scrapped; bills piling up; job opportunities closing left and right, in sync with the plummeting economy; temporary, high-cost, useless health insurance ending; and my damaged RV becoming more a haven for rain and mice than me and JoJo.

Reversing course, light filtered across my tanned arms, my blonding curls; I breathed deeply.

Keep moving.

Setting my bounty inside my clay-caked car, I reminded myself not to explore the wealth of accessible mental rabbit holes, down which I’d plummeted for weeks—where self-questioning and deprecation exacted a depressingly high emotional toll.

I turned the key in the ignition and inched uphill.

The Check Engine light illuminated, its accompanying sensors flashing; I lay my head on the worn steering wheel.

Each day, something reopened an unmendable wound festering within me.

***

A month prior, I sat in the rental car’s absurdly low driver’s seat and held my breath behind my mask, all the while turning toward the window and away from the unmasked rental technician—who recited a litany of unnecessary add-ons for my cross-country trek.

I pressed my gloved finger to the iPad screen and scrawled an illegible signature.

“Have a good trip,” she said, promptly exiting the vehicle and coughing into the wind.

I doused my hands and the steering wheel in hand sanitizer, shifted the car into drive, and breathed out. Adjusting the rear view mirror, I mentally recited everything I’d packed as I locked New Mexico in my sights. I had no idea how far I’d make it each day or where I’d sleep; all I knew was that the two-door coupe would serve as my makeshift bubble whilst navigating through COVID-19-racked states.

Twelve hours later, just outside of Oklahoma, foreboding storm clouds shrouded the moon—lightening pulsing through the darkened masses, as my phone’s weather radar tracked a solidly red line descending on Norman. I rolled into my friend’s driveway as the wind picked up, and we exchanged socially distanced greetings before the rain poured down and I ran back to my car—the seat declined, a pillow on the headrest. Bouts of hail and furiously loud thunder punctuated the night as I tossed and turned, feeling my neck and back muscles tighten.

Veiled by dawn, I peed into my ad hoc toilet bottle and lodged it in the passenger-side door’s storage cubby—ensuring I’d tightened the lid.

Along the highway shortly thereafter, I watched the officer approach as I pressed my mask’s nose guard and rolled down the passenger-side window. Before he appeared, I flushed with anxiety and anger—recognizing that if I were BIPOC, my frenetic attempts to mask up could’ve been construed as threatening, an act of aggression. Maskless, he leaned in through the window; the added weight on the frame caused the full urine bottle just below his forearm to shudder. Amid a pandemic, it seemed even more unnecessarily bizarre for such a stop—much less without PPE; but part of me was glad he honed in on me, rather than the Black and Brown drivers who’d flanked me. A warning later, I pulled off the shoulder and merged back into traffic. Even though my hands were gloved, my face covered, I slathered myself in sanitizer—feeling wholly unclean.

New Mexico’s intense sun broke through the lone tree’s branches and fell upon the collection of pots and listing plants. I’d stepped into the yard so many times before, each of which had been fueled by excitement—the expectation of seeing him framed through the open door ahead, hearing his laugh. But there, as the heat rose from the baked earth, I knew the vibrantly blue door would never open. I collected what remained of my plants and stowed them in the trunk of my dirt-covered Subaru—a bittersweet reunion.

That night, as I walked with my friend along water-filled arroyos, I felt New Mexico’s familiar pull—and mourned the finality of its loss and all of the frayed, loose ends therein, which only intensified as I crossed the state line the next morning, reflected on my abruptly ended life chapter there, and sent a final text.

Thank you for making New Mexico worth it.

***

Never did I imagine I’d be standing in a line at a driver’s license office during a pandemic. The attending clerk scanned my temperature and nodded toward the largely vacant waiting area—the few seats separated by a number of blue X’s.

“Have you ever had an Alabama driver’s license before?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When I last lived here, fourteen years ago.”

“Wow. Why’d you come back?”

Her probing question surprised me, much like the sentiment expressed by my childhood hair stylist when I’d stopped by months before to say hello, to tell her I was back.

“And is that a good thing or a bad thing?” she’d asked, a knowing smile curving at the corner of her lips.

Given the extent to which my plans had unraveled, I recognized my honest answers to both questions remained debated by the jury in my head.

“Please remove your mask,” the intake clerk said from behind her plexiglass shield.

I repeated her request slowly, feeling my anxiety rise.

“I totally get ya, man,” my neighbor said from behind his mask, nodding as I fumbled to remove mine and muster a smile in front of the green square on the wall.

Outside, I faced a completely empty carnival setup—the carousels and Ferris wheel at the corner of the cracked pavement creaking in the wind. I folded my temporary license into my wallet.

A rain shower broke as I eased off of the county road, back onto the gravel driveway and dodged Zebra Swallowtails fluttering through the air; around the curve, nestled atop the hill, my RV came into view.

Heat rippled across Bertie’s roof while I ruffled new okra leaves. Bush beans dangled from flowering stems, and tomatoes blushed red. And from an unlikely nest-filled perch above a carrot bed, a tiny, feathered bluebird chick raised its head to meet mine.

Amid the chaos, life continued to unfold.

From my back pocket, I removed my license—my pixelated smile visibly fake. Comparing my hole-punched New Mexico license with it, I bore little resemblance—my hair longer, facial hair fuller, the lines around my eyes noticeably longer.

That evening, as I tarped over garden beds, I craned my head toward the nest—now empty, save a dud egg and a flight feather. The fledgling had flown. I smiled, and watched pink hues fill the sky.

I thought back to my licenses—the photos taken so close in time, and still, they felt years apart. Between then and now, I’d become a stranger unto myself.

But deep within my strained eyes, I recognized the faintest glimmer: the desire to fly.    

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Table for One

Flames writhed around dried roses and love notes, as four geese floated nearby—eyeing me, a stranger on the dock. Charred flakes fluttered as I tipped the last note toward a dying ember, and watched it slowly ignite—eating down through “l” and “love,” and begin licking “you.” Smoke rose, and I felt a coldness grow within me as I sat alone, broken, my legs swinging down near the placid water.

Nudging aside the matchbook and lighter fluid, I lifted the small pine bark pyre and pushed it into the water. It listed as fish pecked the bottom, testing the swamping mass and pulling down burnt petals. I wanted it to sink, needed it gone.

Stones from the bank served swift judgment as I hurled them, the tears pouring down my face; the geese took flight, honking—my own cheering squad. Amid splashes and cracks and sprays of water, most of it disappeared—the remaining fragments floating further away. 

Hours later, as I walked the pond’s edge and timidly scanned the surface for evidence, hoping for none, my eyes fell upon a saturated section lodged amid the weeds. I leered down and felt my heart jolt: edges burned and barely legible, the epistle’s “you” clung to the side.

Frantic, I grabbed a mossy cobble, lifted it like Rafiki did Simba, and thrust it down ferociously—damning the last tangible vestige of a cherished relationship to the deep.

The world felt so much smaller.

***

It was a different kind of mourning.

When I awoke the next morning, it felt as though a stone lay across my chest; heavy enough to shorten my breath, but not to suffocate me entirely, as I’d silently hoped. Up and down, up and down: it rose and fell rhythmically, as anger and fear and uncertainty boxed my heart.

I heaved, and dipped below the rumpled covers to greet the grief—to remind myself of the hard truth that it, too, was a gift.

Tears will saturate and drown, but will not make anything clean. Conscious breathing will not stem the feelings of suffocation. The emotional depths to which you dive, in wonder and pain, to process and extrapolate meaning while replaying the movie of the life you thought you’d share will never bring true resolution; magical thinking cannot conjure a happy ending. 

Absolutely nothing will change the debilitatingly sad reality that someone with whom you shared your whole vulnerable self is gone from your life—reminding you that, to love another fully, we each must love our perfectly imperfect selves unabashedly.

So, get up.

Set a mental table for one, toast the beautiful moments you shared—from which you learned and laughed and felt satisfyingly full. And while the pain of loss will still be there, lingering at the periphery—a jackal waiting to fall upon any scrap of emotional fortitude—you can stem it. You have the power to forgive incrementally, to shift from a space of anger and judgment and fear to one of care: for your present self, your future self—for the person whom you cherished and those you will cherish. 

Breathe out your horrible morning breath.

Get up.

And make yourself proud.

I kicked off the covers, exhaled, and let my soaked eyelids fall.

In my mind’s eye, I kept the charred paper scrap in the pond afloat a moment longer. And then, with gratitude, let it go—the ripples calming on the surface into a reflective pool, where I greeted my hardened face with an affirmation of my own.

I love you. 

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The Land

Micaceous red clay caked beneath my toenails as I stretched, forcing my weight down—propelling myself skyward, toward the reach of towering long leaf pines.

This is neither our land, nor the families’ before us. It’s the land of the Muskogee Creek. And we, random descendants—a family whose surname dapples papered deeds of colonizers’ past—are, at most, undeserving stewards whose “rights” to this bounty are tenuous and never truly justifiable.

***

Borne from exhaustion and a borderline comical series of unfortunate events in New Mexico, I found myself without a job, and forced from my RV site. Like recognizing a bad dye job, I acknowledged it was time to return to my roots—the clay, the green, the creek carving its way through the land as it’d done long before we skipped stones from its sandy banks.

Outside, six inches of snow covered the ground, the sun slowly damning the powdery clumps to frigid slush. Bertie shuddered awake, the side view mirrors vibrating from the slow rumble rippling beneath the sheet metal siding. JoJo slipped under her blankets and commenced her pre-departure routine of heavy napping.

Ten minutes later, Bertie crept out of the RV park, up the hill I coasted down nearly a year prior when I landed in Santa Fe—and felt the same sense of awe and curiosity and pure, unadulterated fear surge through my veins.

This was not your place. And that’s okay.

At the road, I attempted a U-turn and promptly rolled into the far curb. Quickly recalibrating to driving my 10,000 pound home rather than my sedan, I waved apologetically to passing motorists—whose windshields held an unobstructed view to a homemade sign taped to my back window that read, “Thank you for your patience.”

***

The mechanic’s child stared intently at me, her captive audience; her snuffles punctuated each page turn as she recited the names of the coloring book’s line-drawn characters. Behind her, a candle slowly burned down into a sickly sweet cinnamon-scented layer, barely overpowering the olfactory bouquet of oil and spent rubber.

Beside me, JoJo gazed up, visibly annoyed. Hours prior, I’d limped Bertie off of the interstate into the small Texas garage, and all but begged the mechanic to consider helping my aged, rusting beast of a home get down the road. And eight hours later, we’d entered the costly homestretch.

With my heart in my throat, I continued on through Texas, anticipating every slight bump or shudder to end in Bertie’s mechanical failure. But days later, after weathering storms and traffic snarls and impatient drivers, I rolled from asphalt onto gravel, off the county road: the land, my goal.

***

The next day, I hugged my childhood hair stylist and promised an imminent appointment while attempting to place the patron who sat in her chair—head foil-wrapped, waiting to be streaked. The moment I walked out the door, I recognized her as my former neighbor.

Shortly thereafter, I nearly toppled from my bar-side perch in a hipster-focused coffee shop populating a downtown storefront blocks away from my childhood home.

Easily the oldest person sidled up to the poured concrete countertop, I stared vacuously cow-eyed at the kind barista when he said to pay whatever I felt was appropriate.

“First time here, huh?”

“Not in Opelika. But yes, first time here.” In a coffee shop that didn’t have an early bird special, with current music, where I felt aged like a bottom-shelf wine, far from the glare of an unintended spotlight whilst visiting my estranged grandmother in the same nursing home where my great grandmother died.

My mind wandered as another barista opened a side door, illuminating a small cocktail bar in the space adjacent to the coffee shop. Narrowing my eyes, I attempted to reconcile the crumbling, vacant downtown of my youth with the vibrancy of what lay before me—expecting an unseen director to shout,”YES, that’s it! Confusedly nostalgic!”

***

A brisk breeze cut beneath my jacket and danced across the clover field sprawling before me and my father.

“So, you’re back?”

Less a question and more a pronouncement, the words’ weight didn’t go unnoticed. I paused.

“Yes.”

With another invisible hurdle cleared, we eyed the field and I explained what I intended to do there: the site where I’d begin again.

I exhaled, breathing into the wind a smile I felt forming—the joy and anxiety behind it melding with the squeak from the hinge of our broken childhood seesaw far afield. A short distance away, grassy tufts sprang around tumbled rocks—humble markers for beloved family pets returned to the red earth.

Everywhere a memory: a footnote for life chapters to be written.

A chance for rebirth.

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Casual Disruptor

Red chile soaked into seared tortilla: a shifting bed for stewed beans, melted cheese, and scrambled eggs. Across the table, my friend sprinkled fresh jalapeños over her nachos and nodded—confirming my suspicion.

“This is such a small town.”

I’d recently submitted my resignation from my toxic job, the impetus for which was so rich with drama that, in resultant stress-induced insomnia, I crafted a comic strip from it. And barely two days later, I’d been given a week’s notice to vacate my RV park. Suspiciously coincidental, the timing made me recall my friend’s statement—her implication intoning bell-like.

And people talk.

Crumpled notice in-hand, I re-read the short paragraph and stared into the setting sun—fractured light dancing across Bertie: immovable, broken-down.

And just how am I going to fix this?

***

The next day, before I could sit completely, the property manager shoved the freshly printed page across the cluttered desk—the paper’s warmed edges catching on the splintered tabletop.

“I wouldn’t want to put you in an awkward situation.”

I nearly laughed out loud at their hypocrisy.

Thanks to a friend, I’d been able to leverage renter law, and indicated that the original notice they’d furnished was illegal; the revised notice resting in front of me gifted me a full month to determine my next steps. It was the closest I’d get to an apology. And there would be no further negotiation.

Even still, I’d never been given a reason for the forced removal. As curious as I was livid, I pressed for an answer.

Their hands shook, not from a nervous palsy, but rather broiling anger—the depths of which ran bizarrely shallow. As they launched into an empty rationale, they clutched their coffee mug with such force that I expected it to shatter with each emphatic enunciation—their lips curling carefully around patent mistruths as each burned into my brain.

Minutes later, they nodded once more: my cue to leave. I rose, flustered and upset. Hours afterward, I’d recognize the motives for what they were: a collection of anti-environmental views peppered with violations of freedom of speech and probable anti-queer discrimination. But in that moment, exhausted and fatigued, I slipped the revised notice into my pocket, and pulled open the warped, turquoise-painted door.

Their hollow “God bless” followed me out.

As I approached Bertie and eyed my homemade directional sign to the ad hoc recycling center alongside Bertie’s backside, I laughed at the delicious irony of being displaced due to upsetting the status quo by having an environmental conscience—my driving motive for transitioning into tiny living.

The departure from my job hadn’t been wholly different—a crucible in which I was forced to choose between either honoring my ethics or perpetuating white supremacist praxis. My decision was clear; with my back sore from repeated stabs, I leaned fully into the ensuing uncertainty—wearing with pride the label former complicit coworkers had applied to me: disruptor.

Over the following weeks, through a series of conversations, my boyfriend J and I determined how our respective new chapters—scoped fully outside the state, our eyes fixed on the southeast—would intersect. We both recognized that New Mexico was not our place, and there was comfort in acknowledging it.

We’d move beyond the high desert—gleaning from it the richness of experiential lessons, each of which would help propel us forward.

***

Weeks later, snowplows arrived in the layered parking lot—skimming packed lenses methodically, the trucks’ wheels performing mechanical ballet.

Thick flakes slowly descended from laden grey clouds as I scanned my laptop’s screen—my southerly route paved in fat blue lines to Alabama. Powdery blocks cleaved away from the coffee shop’s eaves and exploded across the icy sidewalk. A car’s spinning wheels reminded me that I’d left Bertie’s snow chains in my car, stored with J in Albuquerque. But I quickly reminded myself that I wouldn’t know how to fasten them anyhow; they were more of a security blanket—one I hoped I wouldn’t miss.

Sighing, I took a deep pull from my coffee, imagining the journey over the next four days—my mind juggling multiple variables as my bank account emptied.  

More snow fell from the roof, mounding into frigid piles.

The Land of Enchantment had morphed into the Land of Entrapment. I narrowed my eyes, answering an unasked question.

But you can’t have me.

***

Just as snow began to fall again, I pushed aside the blanket draped inside Bertie’s door, and dusted off my hair. JoJo wriggled around in one of her nests, rolling over for reassuring rubs. I nuzzled her nose with my chilled cheek.

“Bear with me, little bean. We’ve got a tiring journey ahead.”

A ladder rested precariously atop my infrequently used bicycle, which balanced haphazardly across three lidded garbage cans packed with wrapped inventory for my future vintage shop. The air, heavy with the smell of rubber muck boots, warmed slowly from the faithful tower heater.

Out from my laden grocery bag, I wrangled a large wedge of cornbread—JoJo angling for any errant crumb as I inhaled the buttered bread, leaving no trace on the wrinkled plastic wrap. I stared out the window.

Within 24 hours, I’d unmoor my home and leave New Mexico. Whereas some RVers enjoyed driving days, I never did—my mind consumed by the chassis’ incessant clattering from offending potholes, as the hours expanded with the asphalt snaking toward the horizon.

JoJo licked my hand, and I smiled down at her before looking back outside. Eyes darting from snow-covered junipers to the muddy arroyo beyond, I murmured again.

You can’t have me. You never did.