—an excerpt—
Billows of snow break like meringues beneath us. My steps whir-whir-whir down the slippery slope, like the doppler I’m aching to forget. Ethan leads. I print where he prints. He holds branches away from my face, warns me of uneven terrain, checks if I’m sniffling from the cold or from tears.
I know the bends of this forest like a hand knows a lightswitch and the furniture it’s dusted for a decade. It's not the path I’m doubting.
We would’ve brought our boys here. Maybe our girl too. We hadn’t met this speck of map when she left. She was the first to die. We sent Sage a video of this place when she became our surrogate, dreamt of flying her across the country to share this with us one day. We dreamt a lot of things.
Let it go, it's no use, STAY PRESENT. I fight to bring myself back to my body, to feel safe here with Ethan, tucked between what was and what won’t be. But I’m trapped in a house of cards, afraid of the wind, afraid of papercuts, afraid of everything. The more I lose, the more I have to lose.
We almost lost this forest too; a tornado ripped through it, uprooted its most entrenched roots. For three seasons, we couldn’t even enter, couldn’t feel at home pressed against her chest. Now, we have to crawl under fallen trunks, bellies against the earth, and trace wide berths around piles of prickly pines. Stomp stomp stomp to leave our future-selves hints on how to exit unscathed.
It'll never be like before. Once something cracks, that’s it.
The first time I bite into a fig fresh off the tree, I almost cry.
Its juices rush to my cheeks. One swallow and I understand my grandmother Rosine’s bloodstream, who she was before snow. How could you leave this behind, I want to ask her, this land of pomegranate trees in olive groves, of sandy air and trays of tomatoes sunbathing on improvised surfaces.
Cicadas whine in my ears and the rust soil sneaks between my toes. I’ve hankered for this light since my mom would tell me stories set on their wraparound balcony with cool tiles that repelled the desert heat, stories about how my grandmother would lower a basket to street level then hoist up their delivery of milk and eggs. She’d tell me how the sun would play on their kitchen walls while my grandmother minced mulukhiyah leaves, pounded garlic, plucked the chicken clean. As a six year-old, I couldn’t imagine myself one grade older, yet I could easily picture a Mediterranean life.
