Last spring—April to be exact—mud season had turned to windy season had turned to fire season in a flash. Fire season much earlier than “normal” but you know, I know, none of what’s happening anymore is normal. Deep, dark winter days—days where I was unable to walk due to a freak accident, a shatter of the tiniest bone, just barely behind me but in a flash, fire. The hope of reconciliation, the hope of spring, vanished.
When it began, wind blowing it fast, I was in New York City, my first time back since I left after 16 years, 6 months into the pandemic, and ran to the mountains of the high desert. I didn’t want to leave, I just couldn’t maintain my life in a tiny studio anymore. I was to be away, back home, for a month.
Each day I checked the fire maps, inch by inch mile by mile, the fire got closer to the house my girlfriend and I rent. I was navigating many things at once: an outdoor wedding for dear friends, being back in a city I love and miss, returning to family after much time away, finally gathering outside to celebrate the loss of my grandmother’s life in the early days of the pandemic.
Sure, fire, why not heap on more catastrophe. More loss.
The night before I flew back to so called New Mexico, my girlfriend asked me where my passport and birth certificate were in case while picking me up two hours away from home, the fire got too close for us to return.
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