September 16

i.

All morning the sun lifts itself higher into hazy skies. It’s not its usual bright September white against blue but a gooey orange, more like an early summer morning. I saw that summer sun dozens of times this year, as I tiptoed across the house while everyone else slept.

It cracked its egg self each morning while I sat at my desk tripping over words. No meaning, no triumph. Nothing like a sunrise or even a broken egg. What I would have given to touch that rich yolk, even for a moment.

ii.

Today everything is blurry. Not just the sun and the sky, but inside me. I feel out of focus, all the lines around me softened. Rest, I think. But I can’t. Not yet. The kids scurry around and list after list clutters my brain.

My husband tells me the sky is hazy because of the wildfires on the other side of the country, three thousand miles away. It doesn’t seem like smoke. It’s disorienting. I look out, look up, and wonder what the sky looks like from the west coast.

How many times have I breathed air that someone else, far away from here, also breathed?

How many times have we shared this pale sun?

iii.

A writer friend who lives in Oregon tells me about the fires. She’s safe where she lives but an hour away forests are burning. Everything is covered with ash. The air quality is abysmal. I listen or try to. I think I understand, but I know I don’t. Here there are no wildfires. We don’t have earthquakes or tornadoes or hurricanes.

I’m the person who sees something on the news and thinks I get it.

But there’s no getting it unless you’re there, the world burning around you.

iv.

I drone on about not being able to write, not finding my place, feeling alone. I am wondering, always wondering, and at times I’m bored to death with myself.

Where is my imagination?

Where is my fear?

The sun is out there somewhere, rolling to a boil. The earth is out there somewhere, scorched and bursting open. What little do we know of what’s to come? All the more reason to do something, I think.

I can be the sun perhaps. I can blaze and smolder. I could be the summer sky or the fall, a deep orange or a faltering blue. The world opening to one breath, that’s what I breathe too.

Give me lungs, give me eyes, give me heart.

Then, the words to capture it all.