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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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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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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.

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Insecure

Cold always found its way—creeping up through a hairline crack, a splintered board; coursing silently as it filled the space—curling around my breath, expulsed from dreamscapes, as the frayed comforter rose and fell.

Overhead, the handmade address sign from my grandparents’ house swung slightly as another lodger vacated in the quiet early morning hours, their rig rumbling over dusty gravel and worn speed bumps, vibrating me awake.

Fully emerged from my blanketed cocoon, I descended from the bunk and felt the Reflectix panels’ outfacing sides against the windows—to assess the angle of the warming sun and decide if it was time to remove the panels and switch off the heater, to capitalize on solar gain.

Outside, as another rig drove by, I examined the leavings of my carefully tended tomato plants: their late fruit dangling, stems and leaves with chlorophyll-exploded veins—the listing masses liquefied in the rising sun. I wrested away the tomatoes and tossed them into a small bowl. Later, I’d crack open the green skins, scoop out the seeds, and dry them for next year’s planting. Though late this year, the fruit would enable me to try again under a different sun.

Feral cats skittered along the coyote fence’s uneven top, leering down as I nudged wind-jostled insulation board back into place along Bertie’s underside. I imagined if I looked underneath, I’d find a number of critters hunkered down there, escaping the morning’s below freezing temperatures.

Ensnared within the same crucible, we creatures had a way of striking an amenable symbiosis.  

***

Shattered eggshells lay in the sink next to a weeping nectarine pit as the heater sputtered welcoming warmth—animating the leaves of the avocado tree leaning in its pot atop the table. JoJo draped herself over the dinette bench’s cushioned back and dozed into the morning sun spilling through the windows. I pulled from my steaming mug of tea, reviewed my weekend to-do list, and eyed the pair of vent caps I had to replace.  

Scaling the ladder to the roof, I slung my supplies upward as my new neighbor tottered behind his rig. A few rungs from the top, I swiveled my head as he hollered up.

“SECURE YOURSELF!”

I smiled quizzically and kept going, at which point he yelled again, revealing from his pant pocket a gleaming pistol—aiming it at the ground. With just enough time to duck haphazardly behind my roof-mounted storage unit, I flinched as the bullet seared into leaf-littered earth. Soon thereafter, as I sealed a vent flange, he staggered drunkenly to the same spot and took a piss, as if to acknowledge a job well done. 

***

As I rounded the bend where asphalt gave way to gravel, I shifted the grocery bag to my other shoulder and eyed a familiar landmark. Brittle plastic sheeting flapped against the trolley’s split, calving side panels—translucent fragments glittering in the beating sun against the rusting behemoth. Ahead, a freed sheet cartwheeled across the gravel road; bits and pieces catapulted into the surrounding bramble and lay still: inviting decay in an apocalyptic nightmarescape, our waking reality.

I nudged open the rusted chain-link gate leading into the park, and noticed one of the groundskeepers mending a section of the coyote fence. I looked around at the barren landscape and smiled to myself.

Years from now, as economies collapse and governments fracture, we’ll laugh at such absurd things as fences. Because nothing can keep out the inevitable. 

Water seeps through, warping; the sun bakes, bending. And, ultimately, time splinters each of us: bones fragmenting into earth, toiled up by worms, arachnids—keepers of the dead. 

Our sense of security: an insidious ruse.

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Burning Stars

Oil lamps glowed beneath creaking branches, and shadows danced across the Avion’s dented metallic shell.

Re-packing their bowls, the men laughed into the darkness—each taking a heavy pull, blowing smoke into the star-studded sky. One ruminated about environmental collapse and AI takeover, as the other quietly considered the works of Marx and opined about the ease with which he could put a bullet through his head: both lost in thought, their whispers fading into the night.

Rabbits flattened themselves beneath towering junipers, and three kittens scurried through a gap in the fence line. Overhead, resident owls debuted beneath a new moon.

***

A large watermelon wedge sweated across the countertop as JoJo clamored atop the dinette for an unobstructed view. I drove the cold spoon down through the peak, the juice spritzing nearby canisters. With the night’s heat settled fully, the fruit’s cool, smooth body dissolved across my tongue as sweat beaded along my brow.

JoJo set to her bowl in ravenous fashion, sourcing the translucent blob I plunked amid her kibble. Lights twinkled along the turquoise cabinet fronts, an ethereal haze illuminating my bed. A network of fans sputtered loyally—churning the heat upward, out through the roof vents.

Outside, the occasional cloud fractured the moonlight, allowing the night to swallow up everything within view; and out from it, nocturnal creatures laid claim to their domain.

***

My fingers traced constellations across his back, and glided over the gentle twists of muscled flesh. His eyes bored into mine; the subtle curves around his mouth testaments to deep, expulsed laughter.

There I lay, unconvinced that I wasn’t dreaming—feeling an eruptive, welcomed mental shift: an enlivening jolt.

I smiled and buried my face into his—recognizing that the unexpected could still happen beneath the same stars that bore witness to life and death and heartache and resurrection as they burned into oblivion.

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Expect Rain

Heat from the asphalt curled over my worn sandals as rain spritzed my face and I sidestepped a disintegrating Vienna sausage. Overhead, lightning pulsed inside swollen clouds. Cars screamed down the road, and buses eased up to stops, their worn brakes shrieking—emptying weary passengers with laden bags and drooping eyelids.

I reached up to my earphones and turned up the volume. The world was too loud.

With my hand shoved into a butter-stained bakery bag, my fingers dissected fresh brownies—the melted chocolate caking beneath my nails as I smashed the chunks into my mouth.

The deluge intensified.

Face uplifted, I stopped mid-stride. I could feel the tears coming, roiling up from my gut; I swallowed halfheartedly.

Lean into it.

***

On the patio, soil-bloated canvas planters listed from the intense sun, their green charges an oasis amid the surrounding, heat-rippling gravel and asphalt.

Cracked cherry gold tomatoes dripped from mature vines clinging to Bertie’s roof ladder—the plant’s generic green container nudged by dry, infrequent wind as flies danced across the caving fruit. Pepper plants sprinkled amongst purple delphinium bowed to the heat as I emptied gallons of yellow-tinged water around their bases—corroded pipe flecks swirling at the bottom of the jug. Lavender erupted upward from a misshapen terra cotta pot, and delicate yellow flowers bloomed along the cucumber and Hillbilly tomato stems; nearby, garlic cloves from Seattle resurged: fresh green strands erected sentry-like.

Gnats hovered around my homemade compost bin, converging as I tipped the lid and turned the moist, heated matter—worms wriggling beneath rotting nectarine pits and shattered eggshells.

Hours before, after a Tinder match ghosted me, my new-old car’s Check Engine light flickered on as my temporary tag fluttered in the breeze—reminding me that I was still very much a visitor.

The desert often takes more than it replenishes.

***

Inside Bertie, fans sputtered and JoJo heaved against my side, collapsing into me with labored pants and darting whale-eyes.

She’d yet to acclimate to evening storms.

I rubbed between her ears until her breaths slowed, her tongue inching out: a harbinger of reserved contentment.

Sliding open the dinette window, I exhaled into the curtain-rustling breeze, as the wet air wicked through my curls.

This is a hard, beautiful place.

With my mind far afield, considering all the sudden shifts, I let my eyes swim in the sky’s pink hues as they melted into darkening gray—birthing a storm with symphonic accompaniment.

Punctuated pops.

Carousing cracks.

Jubilant rolls of distant thunder: an expectation of rain.

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departure

The soil was red, thick – bloody. I found myself sinking into it; my heels dipping below the surface – balance thrown, I caught myself before tumbling headlong into the arroyo. With lips parched, breaking open, I flared my nostrils: raw, scarlet rims.

Here, I felt different – life tugging the corners of my eyes, hanging heavy in the heat, as the arid wind contoured my forehead: rippling, wrinkling waves undulating up into my bouncy, graying flop of curls.

Blues and pinks and deep, primal hues ripped across the sky and into my heart – reminding me to look up at the wide-open world as another day decayed and left with grace, the bursting stars emerging as perennial mourners.

For weeks, I’d felt like a worm slopping onto a heated sidewalk: slowly tanning, draining – feeling the immediacy of life-changing context, recognizing how quickly an untimely end can dawn.

Gravel crunched underfoot as I approached my tiny home, slipping off my mud-caked sandals and tossing them into the door-side bin. I heaved the woven bag from my shoulder onto the counter and caught rogue vegetables as they tumbled out – corralling them into misshapen, chipped earthen bowls. Scanning the compact kitchen, my gaze tripped over worn, hardy containers dotting the scuffed counter top.

The time for fragile, delicate things had passed.

***

“She either takes you in or spits you out,” Joy, my Lyft driver, said authoritatively, glancing back into the rear-view. “And if she takes you in, we call it the Land of Entrapment. Because she’ll always pull you back no matter where you go. So I’d say if you found a job and a place to live, she’s got you.”

Nudging her purple-threaded woven hat, she mused about how she’d left New Mexico years ago and then, one day, found herself driving back.

Sun beamed through the dirt-speckled windshield, warming my face as I took a deep breath and Joy steered to the curb.

“Here we are.”

We pulled up to a stucco building with weathered, sagging blue corbels – the façade cracked but strong.

“And here’s to the first day,” I chuckled anxiously.

“Good luck. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again. This is a small town.”

I waved Joy on, pushed back my shoulders and stepped toward a new beginning – a destabilizing departure.

***

Weeks prior in Seattle, the apartment door slammed louder than I expected – echoing back into the emptiness of the place I’d called home, the keys resting on the counter top. With that, the closest thing to a home I had was Bertie – a rusty, aged RV sitting in a parking lot a city away.

My bus passed by JoJo’s boarding facility and hurtled toward the light rail.

“Wish me luck, sweet baby bean,” I murmured, imagining JoJo inside – curled ball-like atop her bed, wondering what in the hell was happening.

Shortly thereafter, as the rail car door slid shut, I watched graffiti-adorned warehouses whiz by – the airport’s control towers rising in the distance. My heart raced as I shifted my backpack into my lap, double-checking that I had everything I needed for the desperation-fueled flight to my future home state – where a few job interviews awaited.

I loathed flying. But as a tumbleweed, fully unmoored – somersaulting haphazardly toward an unknown roost – the most I could do was buckle my seat belt as the flight attendants advised, burrow my fingernails into the armrest, and brace for liftoff.

I had no job, no apartment, and only a schematic – idealistic and naïve – plan to start over in New Mexico behind the wheel of a machine I’d bought through an app from a complete stranger, and that’d spent more time in repair garages than under my care.

Rolling my eyes closed as children shrieked behind me and the plane lifted skyward, I began laughing uncontrollably.

Certainty was a luxury I’d chucked far afield over the preceding week – as I left my job and watched every cent of my savings hemorrhage into repair shops’ coffers.

Survival, front of mind, was my only recourse.

“Peanuts?” the flight attendant chirped.

“PLEASE!” I bellowed – ears popping, the turbulence growing.

***

A week later, JoJo panted anxiously as I pushed the overfilled box of pottery, tapestries, movies, and a wooden macaw onto the thrift store’s concrete loading pad. I stood back and considered the hodgepodge collection, recalling each item’s origin story before clamoring back into the driver’s seat and wrestling with the faulty seat belt.

Only hours before, I’d stared, slack-jawed, inside the packed RV – nestled between a mold-covered moving van and a wrecked Volvo rusting into oblivion. As I’d worked to settle JoJo inside our new home, I entered full-fledged panic mode – where the racing thought of “WHY DID I THINK ALL OF THIS COULD FIT INTO 150 SQUARE FEET?” left no mental space for me to consider how or what sparked joy. I chucked armfuls of mementos into boxes and shoved them out onto the pavement.

Buckling myself in, I tousled JoJo’s ears – and glanced into the side-view mirror at the pile: the last bits of a former life, things I never imagined I’d part with.

“Thanks for the memories,” I murmured, wiggling the scratched key into the ignition. The engine revved, the frame shook; we began inching away from everything we knew.

***

With my ass hanging out of my pants as I wrangled two hoses from a side compartment, my muttering suddenly melded with a stranger’s voice.

“What a beaver!”

I whipped around, the hoses clattering to the ground.

“EXCUSE ME?”

The bearded man’s faded green eyes peeked out from beneath a weathered baseball cap – twinkly orbs deeply set within wrinkly caverns.

“Your rig. It’s a Beaver, right?”

“OH! Right, yes. It’s a ’77.”

“I figured. We had a bet goin’ that it was older than ours,” he cackled, nodding over to his wife Connie and son Cody, who emerged from the opposite side – their eyes scanning over the details. “I’m Morris.”

Scarred and gnarled, Morris’ hands look like they’d been shoved through a meat grinder; and when his grip tightened, I realized he was missing a thumb. We chatted about our respective rigs – theirs, dubbed Daisy, slightly younger, but very much a work-in-progress: bungee cord-bundled repair accouterments hanging off the back Clampett-style.

“What about yours? Got a name?”

“Bertie.”

I withheld that Bertie’s namesake was a character from one of my favorite, deliciously horrible romantic comedies.

“It’s just gotten so damn expensive around here, y’know? There’s no way we could afford to live in an apartment, much less a house, even down near Spokane,” Morris rasped. “So Daisy’s it. At least we got the basics, and don’t have to scrape by as much.”

I agreed, thinking back to my spiraling debt a year before – and then the very fresh memories of selling all of my stuff to buy Bertie. The trio shifted and huddled around the side door, peeking in and comparing our respective layouts.

Later, after I waved them on, I dusted off one of the hoses I’d dropped, and looked around at the other rigs.

“Well, I guess this is for the water.” I shrugged up toward JoJo, who sat perched atop her favorite chair, just inside the window.

Once I attached it to my campsite’s spigot, and crammed the other end into what I’d hoped was my fresh water tank’s intake port, I opened the valve and raced inside – fully expecting to see water gushing across the floor. Instead, with my head crammed inside a kitchen cabinet, I watched the water trickle through the port into an opaque, dust-covered tank. As it filled, I stepped outside and unscrewed the generator housing’s door – the handle destroyed long ago. I probed around the inside and began unspooling a mass of thick cabling, eyeing the pronged plug at the end – quickly recognizing that it didn’t fit the socket on the shore power post leaning several yards away. I pivoted, turned off the spigot, and began throwing open all of the compartments – eventually uncovering the necessary adapter beneath a ball of papers inside the glove box. With shore power connected, I scurried inside and flipped the switch on the water pump. A mechanical purr issued from beneath the sink, and water trickled from the faucet. I squealed.

We had power. We had water. It was all coming to life.

An hour later, as I walked my copper kettle to the shared kitchen lean-to, I waved to Morris; he stood over Cody, shaving down his shoulder-length hair: clumps dropping into the leaf litter below the picnic table.

Back in Bertie, I poured the boiling water into the cup of noodles, watching the strands unfurl slowly, the steam dissipating up through the vents. JoJo pitter-pattered across the worn linoleum as she revolved through a series of new sentry posts. Refusing to dirty utensils, I slurped out the noodles, and sized up the splintered bed base a few feet away: my final project for the day. I took a breath, and heaved my weight down onto the screwdriver, barely loosening the base’s over-tightened screws. Slowly, haphazardly, I pulled apart the homemade contraption – doing my best not to rip out a chunk of the floor in the process.

As I propelled the last L-shaped two-by-four section outside, I finally felt some sense of accomplishment.

With the space hog gone, I began carving up a beloved area rug to fit the compartmentalized living space, and cover the aged linoleum. Fibers fluttered to the floor and dust motes filled the air. Within the hour, I’d transformed the entire living space.

JoJo nuzzled the familiar carpet, burying her face into the shag until she started wheezing. I smiled down at her.

“Maybe we can do this after all.”

***

Days later, as I dug my fingernails into Bertie’s steering wheel, I stared into an impenetrable white mass and pleaded to the semi ahead not to disappear, not to leave me. But moments later, it was gone. Alone in the void, I careened through snow-packed passes – accelerating downhill just enough to gain the requisite momentum to crest the next peak, barely maintaining traction on the ice-covered road. Bertie’s innards rattled violently; something shattered. JoJo buried herself inside her blanket-packed crate, and I angled the heater’s sputtering vents toward her.

Tiny living YouTube videos didn’t prepare me for this!

A malevolent chill permeated everything, and I felt as though if I stopped – even if somehow I managed to find a turnout that wasn’t buried in snow – we’d die in Utah’s mountains.

Snow crashed down, and the windshield wipers barely kept pace. I wanted to scream and cry, but couldn’t muster the energy. My neck ached from straining forward to see the road – to guide Bertie’s tires along the slushy, navigable tracks that migrated from my lane into the center of the road, as snow accreted alongside the shoulders and spilled over into the lanes’ outer edges.

And so I continued into the blizzard’s gaping maw, willing my gas gauge not to plummet any closer to “E” and downshifting to my lowest gear to creep up each successively steeper incline.

Forty minutes later, I glimpsed a speck of blue through the heavy gray veil hanging overhead. I focused on it – my North Star – breathed deeply, and pressed forward. Rain drizzled down, and the roadways’ ice began to thaw. And then the shroud that’d haunted me through the passes slowly fell away – acquiescing to clearer skies and the burnt desert floor, with its rocky pinnacles and tumbled, red earth.

I flexed my hands – whitened knuckles suddenly flushed with blood: revived. JoJo poked her nose out from her cocoon, and I lifted my foot from the accelerator as I guided Bertie into the first gas station for nearly 100 miles.

I shoved open the door and hollered, stretching my legs.

A few scraggly shrubs bordered the pothole-pocked, crumbling lot; but with my adrenaline pumping, it felt as though I were looking at the Grand Canyon. I gulped in the cool air; a motorcyclist at the next pump farted.

Walking JoJo over to some ground cover, I looked back at Bertie – dripping wet from the melting ice, lenses of packed snow crashing from the roof onto the hood.

Ahead, the sky over Moab was open, welcoming.

I exhaled.

Forward.

***

Two days later, I cooed into Bertie’s dash as we bucked uphill from Albuquerque.

“Please, please. Just a little further.”

But then, with one last shudder, we drifted to the side of the road, as cars, semis, and amply fortified RVs flew past. This was it: a nightmarish realization I’d managed to relegate to the back of my mind for over 1,400 miles. My home was broken – tilting along a narrow shoulder, just 15 miles south of our final destination in Santa Fe.

“Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!”

Four hours later, a wrecker arrived – the young driver, Jonas, nodding for me to clamor up into his extended truck cab where his wife and toddler sat.

“Just knock on the window and they’ll let you in.”

As I shifted JoJo’s crate beneath my arm and lightly rapped the window, I noticed a thin stream of antifreeze trickling down from the engine block onto the wrecker bed – the neon green reminiscent of the wounded alien in Predator.

If it bleeds, you can kill it. 

Jonas pulled coupled chains from a side panel and lashed them around Bertie’s undercarriage, before flipping a series of winch levers with unexpected delicacy. The wrecker heaved with every successive inch the winch hoisted Bertie forward. We lurched back, and I expected us to tumble down the hillside.

“WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN THERE ANYWAY?” Jonas yelled up, through the wind.

“JUST MY LIFE.”

He threw his head back and laughed, and throttled two levers until Bertie’s bumper touched the cab.

“Alright, where’re we headed again?” he asked, propelling himself into the driver’s seat.

I plugged in the directions while fielding calls from my inept insurance company.

Twenty minutes later, we pulled into an abandoned lot abutting the RV park.

“I’m gonna have to let it off here, ‘cause I don’t think I can get down there,” Jonas mused, nodding toward the narrow entrance corridor.

“That’s fine.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jonas sighed, visibly annoyed.

“It’s just not wanting to come off.”

It was like watching an automotive rendition of Titanic – starring the wrecker as frigid Leo, and Bertie as tenacious Kate. As much as Bertie wanted to hold on, it was clear the only way to survive would be to let go.

“AND SORRY, BUT THE TOW HITCH IS GONNA HAVE TO SCRAPE,” Jonas screamed through the wrecker’s mechanical crunching.

Almost immediately, Bertie’s tow hitch drilled into the asphalt; chunks catapulted in all directions. I shielded JoJo’s face.

“This is fine. It’s. All. Fine.”

And then, without any fanfare, Bertie rolled off.

I waved on Jonas and his family, stowed JoJo, and retrieved my spot assignment from the office.

The sun was beginning to set, and I willed my battered home to gain enough centripetal force to make it to the weedy stretch of gravel at the other end of the park.

“Let’s get it, B!”

We coasted downhill, gained too much speed, and took a hard turn around a curve – and began inching back uphill. A few feet past my spot, Bertie stopped.

Welp, this is it.

Other RVers stared as I popped it in reverse – clearly too close to back in sufficiently. But thanks largely to gravity, after a four-point turn and multiple screams from me, Bertie settled into the space with just enough room for me to reach shore power.

I went inside, released JoJo from her crate, and collapsed onto the floor.

“Holy fuck. We actually made it.”

***

A month later, I gazed across the gravel drive as the large, glistening motorhome lurched into sudden stillness. Clicks and pops followed, and the expansive side panels extended slowly. Each time such a rig puttered into the park and got settled, it was like watching a preview for a Transformers sequel.

With a dented, overused water jug in-hand, I inched past JoJo and out the screen door – scurrying around the side to open the water spigot. Shortly after arriving, I’d accidentally burned out my overtaxed water pump. So I had to revert to Camping 101 and draw water directly from the spigot and filter it through my Brita.

As I made my way back around, JoJo jumped up along the window, her tongue inching out. Plumes of dust kicked up from the newly arrived RV as my temporary neighbors worked to level it – gaseous exultations from firing pistons melting into the heavy wind.

I glanced back at Bertie’s weathered, chipped exterior – tracing the rust-dusted 70s motif along the passenger door down to the cracked gray water tank, out from which oozed a stalactite of cooking oil and dishwater. Sagged to one side, Bertie made it clear to any seasoned RVer that everyone inside was far from level.

I set the jug on the counter, grabbed my keys, and threw open the driver’s side door. Turning the ignition, I pumped the accelerator until Bertie churned to life – clouds of exhaust billowing out from beneath the housing, courtesy of a massive crack in the exhaust system.

“You’re one cranky beast.”

Two passersby scuttled past, smirking at Bertie’s clattering chassis. I leaned in, revved the engine, and rested my head on the steering wheel.

“And I love every imperfect inch of you.”

Fat snowflakes filtered down from the startlingly blue sky, and obliterated instantly against the gravel. I turned off the engine, and slammed the door behind me. Across the fence behind Bertie, children raced after an ice cream truck – a rogue Chihuahua duo nipping at their heels.

I tilted my head back and opened my mouth – aiming for a few snowflakes. As the first icy clump hit my tongue and dissolved , I closed my eyes – the wind billowing through my hair, ruffling my shirt.

With the right amount of pressure, stress, and tenacity, past lives slough away like wallpaper from wettened walls – and you find yourself somewhere different, living out a day you never could’ve imagined.

A few feet away, the door of my neighbors’ massive rig swung open, revealing a hefty man with a ruddy nose and thick glasses.

He threw two camping chairs out the door and waved me over.

“Hey! C’mon over for a beer. I bet you have some stories to tell.”

I laughed, knocked a few lingering flakes from my sleeves, and stepped toward him.

“That I do.”

Posted on

Where We’ll Go

He wore a wry smile like an ill-fitting, itchy sweater. I could tell he was nervous—as if he was expecting me to take a knee and propose, kick-starting a flash mob. But this wasn’t a romantic comedy, just a lunch break. And all I wanted to do was give him my wedding ring.

Two minutes later, that symbol of fidelity and matrimony and love vanished with him into a growing, teeming crowd outside. My phone vibrated from a text alert:

“You have $90.25 pending transfer.”

I darkened the screen, and walked across the street to my office to look at spreadsheets outlining events I wouldn’t attend, logistics I wouldn’t field. With four years’ worth of the Pacific Northwest beneath my belt, and the continued rise in the cost of living, I decided it was time to go—to upend the proverbial hourglass, and craft an endgame before the last grain of sand trickled through.

Out my pigeon poop-speckled window, the Great Wheel slowly turned above Elliot Bay, and I swiveled in my chair to begin emptying file folders.

Round and around we go.

***

As I lay on the floor, the shag carpet’s frayed orange fibers illuminated by a camping lantern—its glow amplified by the snow falling outside—I felt something shift inside me. Looking around at the vacant space as Wolf Mother’s “Vagabond” hummed nearby, I recognized that my life would never be the same.

We’re often told that insanity is defined as doing the same thing repeatedly expecting different results. And for most of my adult life, I’d done exactly that: dragged around the same objects; expended inordinate amounts of time convincing myself that this was the job; and worked to feel connected, part of a community. I’d work proactively to stitch everything together, to write a fresh life chapter that felt more compelling. But then, after a time, it’d trend into the realm of fiction—and I’d wake to the reality that my beautiful things continued to gather dust in cluttered, temporary lodgings that the climbing cost of living would wrest away. And I’d, once again, begin to float, unmoored—navigating the smoothest currents to the closest, safest shoreline where I’d start the cycle anew.

And so, months before that snowy evening, I recognized that changing a little meant staying and steeping in the sameness that’d cajoled me into apathy, into aligning with the status quo. But as I stared into the mostly darkened room—my back against clustered pillows, my head resting against the legs of my only remaining chair—I felt as though my exhausted heart had been lowered into a deep well of hope: the weathered bucket filling, refreshing the atrophied organ.

Self-selecting into tiny living was similar to filing for divorce—suddenly recognizing that I no longer wanted to be comfortable in my discomfort. But as empowering a decision as it was to make, I knew it’d also be one of the hardest to see through to fruition; after all, it required me leaving a life I’d been conditioned to believe was normal, responsible—even successful. There’d be so much uncertainty and fear. But I knew that if I remained confined in the monotonous cycle in which I was stuck, I’d continue to wither; my selfhood would die. And I couldn’t allow that to happen, for there’s so much to do and see and wonder about.

***

Crusts at my eyes’ edges roughened my fingertips as I slowly rose, grinding away a dream’s haze with sleep-strengthened fists. A deep, insatiable taste for the sunrise broiled in my gut; I knew I had to see it: a primal reminder of rebirth.

From her blanket-plumped bed, JoJo blinked confusedly, watching me shuffle over to the windows with my lukewarm coffee, a mason jar of cool water, and the last square of chocolate from the previous night’s decimated dessert.

And then, I waited—framed by neon geranium tendrils poised to gulp in the same light. Coffee washed over the chocolate, dissolving it across my tongue, as my mouth flexed, the corners liberated from the night’s tacked-on drool.

I eyed the distant mountains, their pink halo expanding—stretching across neighboring peaks. Outside, the empty streets gleamed with frost, and bloated seagulls dipped and weaved above the low-slung industrial buildings abutting my apartment, and then settled atop a few telephone poles; their feathered necks angled in the same direction I looked.

Fall seven times, get up eight.

This Japanese proverb blipped into my morning messages from a friend I hadn’t seen in years. I took a deep breath, keeping my eyes firmly affixed to the horizon. My strength rallied, mingling with a burning desire for the sun; the fear that’d been sown over the past week wasn’t gone, but its growth had been stymied by this dormant cultivar. Each will grow, wither, and arc—but ultimately I must decide which to tend.

I took another sip. And then, through a small hole in the cloud bank, a slat of brilliant light burst forth. Moments later, the tip of the sun pushed above the remaining clouds—dousing the windowsill, the geranium, and me with its brilliance. I pulled a breath up from my toe tips, and exhaled into the windowpane.

JoJo nuzzled my leg, and I folded myself down onto the floor. Her tongue inched out of her mouth as I rubbed between her ears, her tiny head pressing into my knee. I smiled.

 …get up eight.

***

Lately, with the litany of RV repairs and growing bills cluttering every corner of my mental frame as I hemorrhage savings and creep up on my last days of work, I feel wholly depleted—as if there’s no thread of a shred of hope that this endeavor will pan out. But I’ve tried to channel the optimism I felt the first night I sat in my RV alone.

Scanning the space, I knew there were plenty of things to be done, and that gave me pause. Even still, I felt a bizarre sense of calm, and remembered thinking: I have a home now. Bertie was an imperfect block that needed ample work, but Bertie was mine, and would go wherever I went. I imagined the journeys we’d take together and smiled.

I reached into my backpack and removed my grandmother’s rag-wrapped music box, and cranked the small key, listening as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” slowly chimed into the darkness. I ran my hand along Bertie’s weathered dash, and over two puffy, faded Troll stickers.

“And just where will we go?” I murmured.

I rested my head against the back of the leather captain’s chair and closed my eyes. And in the dark, the aged chimes’ hammer fell gracefully.

Some…

…where.