from the pen of icarus blake

Last night I stood on my balcony and watched the light of a wildfire crest one of the foothills that grace the horizon.  This morning I awoke with woodsmoke in my lungs and a haze across the sky.  Soon, the sun will turn red.

When I go to work later today, I will leave this plume of smoke and sit beneath the shadow of another as the fire that rips it from the earth runs into the burn scar from yet another wildfire.  At work, we talk about what we keep in our go bags and our plans for getting our pets out over biopsies taken from people whose lives are about to change forever.  Somewhere in Wyoming, a woman loses her leg to diabetes.  A few hours later, I am taking it apart on my table.  A few hours after that, I will go home beneath a starless sky.  Traverse one plume of smoke for another while my lungs clench around the particulates shot into our atmosphere.

I cook my dinner late at home.  I treat my partner to ice cream and we watch Ru Paul’s Drag Race, just trying to weather the world ending around us.  Hottest summer on record, again.