Last winter, I was buried. Found myself at the bottom of a very deep hole, and the ladder out was on fire. Somehow, my life had filled with smoke.
In February, I went to Kansas City for a writing conference with some of the folks from my online writing group. It helped to be around them, but it was the first time we’d met in real life. The connection felt a little static-y. I didn’t trust myself to touch anyone. I was at the bottom looking up, and it felt like a lot to ask them to meet me down there, in the blaze.
When I came home, my friend Matt was here with his husband Chris. For months, they’d been traveling all over the world. They made me the last stop before home, which made my heartbeat a little louder than it had been beating.
February in the desert can be some magical shit. Last year, water filled the riverbed. Temperatures were cold— there was wind and rain and big, gorgeous gray clouds.
If you know me, you know that’s my sweet spot. Sun every day is boring af— it makes me highly suspicious. I don’t want Tigger 24/7. It’s exhausting. I need some Eeyore too, ya know? A little darkness to get me going, as Mary would say.
On a clear but cool day, Matt, Chris, and I headed out my porch door and wandered into the canyon. We hiked for a bit, then Chris sent up his drone. This video is footage from his flight across the canyon in my backyard. While Chris flew, Matt and I sat on a boulder in the river, and he read me some of his new work.
I remember listening closely to Matt’s voice mixed in with the cadence of the water. Water rushing through a usually dry desert vein. It didn’t lift me out of the murk, exactly. It was better than that. More effortless. It made me feel like someone loved me enough to crawl down and into the smoke to find me. Loved me enough to sit beside me on the lip of the flame, and read me something beautiful. For the first time in months, I felt real. Engulfed in something other than pain.
That was the day I started up the ladder— fire and all. It was the day I found out which parts of me to let burn, and which parts never will.
Chris recently sent me this video. It took him months and months to cull through the hours of footage he shot on their trip. Having a record of this day means so much to me. Not only because it’s a beautiful place, beautifully shot and edited, but because that’s me next to Matt. On a rock in a river. In the middle of the desert. On the day he stopped, dropped, and rolled to be beside me.
And that’s my casita, with the front door wide open. That seems important now— that we left the door wide open. As important as the 2 of them coming through it to be with me.
But before the river and the beauty and the hot climbing out, I’d written this poem about the hole. It was too raw to write in first person. I wrote it in the before. Before my friends came looking for me, and I was an ember. Before the door opened to let in love’s backdraft, and found me taking notes on the lack of oxygen. Before I felt real again and was trying to not need, while needing more of everything than I ever remember needing.
Thank god befores have afters.
If you’re someplace like this— someplace strange that’s making you wonder if you’re even real, I hope this poem settles in beside you. Like someone crawling down and coming through the smoke. Just to sit. And maybe read you something beautiful they wrote from the after. xo
It's Strange Here
Well-meaning friends ask what we need.
We need everything we think, but don’t say.
We need all of it, but we don't ask for any of it.
We want your presence— your promised return,
but we're afraid we may spontaneously
weep uncontrollably.
We may need to scream in the shower and we
can’t keep ourselves a secret with you here.
Can’t be known if you are not.
You see our quandary.
An iron lung of sadness breathes us,
but just barely.
Just enough to keep us alive and wondering why.
We protrude from the earth.
A wiry tenderness.
Hug us and we might pierce you.
Don’t, and we might disappear.
It’s no way to grow old.
The therapist wants us
to abandon the weapons we’ve
protected ourselves with since time immemorial.
Wants us to set them down
in the parched red dirt—
let the front lines of the world
march in unchallenged.
(We pay $130 an hour for this advice.
It’s just a cover charge.
Once we’re in, we pay through the nose.)
Surrender is so much more
complicated and romantic than it sounds.
We never know what
to do with our empty hands
or our tender chested fear.
Do you know how strong you have to be to be fragile?
It’s an emotional apocalypse here.
The dead feelings come back to life and
we have to fight them all— all at once.
The new and the old— trying to not get bit
by something that was supposed to die.
And everyone is counting on us to survive,
to keep fighting.
Fight and surrender —the strangest paradox.
Here’s the only advice I can give. (It’s free.)
Drink lots of water.
Rise from the bed if you can.
Feed the dog.
Find some hope,
even if it's in tatters on the barbed wire.
Feel around for a light switch,
careful to not crack your shins
on the end tables of shame.
Call your therapist when you’re bloodless.
If all else fails,
lay on the floor with the dog.
Count your ribs.
Panic only if the count changes.
If you need more time,
tell them you're surrendering.
Or tell them you’re in the fight and
things are looking up.
Don’t tell them you’re on the floor.
P.S. Happy New Year’s Eve, y’all.
Listen, I’m not a resolution girl— not one to focus extra hard at the turn of a year on ways I can be a better version of myself. I’m still working on the version I became in 2020. That bitch is (gestures wildly) a whole thing.
Keeping it real is a daily battle for me, so… I got no word for 2025, no vow to cut back on sugar or lose weight, and I’m the last person to give advice. If I know anything at 60, it’s that I don’t know anything.
Except I’m glad you found your way here, glad you stick around, and I’m so deeply grateful for your kindness. Thank you, from the bottom of my wildfire heart.
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