They are finally working on the crisp apartment building across the street. With certain breezes you can still smell the smoke. You called it Canada… No, it’s just next door. The dampness of fire. The longing for belonging.
There’s been a few white guys off and on checking-in on the property. A trailer moved-in where the cars used to park. Where I stood that early morning for the missing persons to show their pale whale skin out of the black smoke. I’ve seen two working crews: one mostly all black, another mostly all mexican. The few white guys in the trailer.
These hot July days it’s been mostly the mexican workers. Ninety degree days with bad air quality. And you’re in the crisp building. I wonder what you notice…I wonder what matters to you. Your shirt says, “Best dad ever.” We are all complaining about the air quality, but for some reason no one can find a fuxking Canadian goose…
It’s a weird process to watch. but for some reason I can’t look away. And, I thought they were going to tear the whole apartment building down. Good for you for saving a brick or two. Should I pat you on the back now? Even though your negligence almost caused lives to stop beating. I don’t know what to tell you. I guess I’m still working through the anger…
by this time most of the cleaning has already been done. The charred belongings and papers and books, blankets, and pictures, and kitchen plates you brought from home. The pictures. The memory that attached itself to this person you no longer have. And I sit in front of you thinking I almost didn’t have you…
I wonder if you found the cat’s body. That’s me. Thinking about the return of the cat’s body. I am not sure why I had to see Maya’s body after our fire. I am not sure why. But again. One of those things I had to see. As if it would make it better. Knowing she wasn’t burned, none of her black fur was touched by a flame. And if it had? Maybe I couldn’t live with myself then? Perhaps I still can’t live with myself now. But for some reason it helped. The guilty feeling of knowing the smoke got to your lungs first, before the fire got to your body.
But that it was the smoke that got her first. “It’s peaceful,” they try to tell you. To try and give you some comfort in this in-between. But even then, no matter what, you never— it’s never anything that’s good enough to hear.
I could imagine she was scared. And that’s the thing that lives in my blood’s memory. A protector that failed to protect, that I failed to get to her in time…
So, the guys work— day-in and day-out— and I’m left wondering what are your complaints? How are your lungs? They break during lunch under the big tree in the grassy park. I see them as I walk past them on my cool-down from my lunch break run. In 90 degree heat because — you’re working too — why shouldn’t I?
And I’m left thinking about these things. Contemplating these things too much. We are born into privilege, we work for privileges, but when fires burn, when the air quality is intolerable— we all share the same air, don’t we? Where do the Canadian geese go, the squirrels, the homeless, the first-responders when the air is bad?
It’s not yet seven and the workers have gotten here before the guy with the key to unlock the gate to let them in. One lies on our front grass on his phone. Another on the back bed of his truck, dangling his feet back and forth with a little boy’s innocence…
“…Meanwhile the wild geese,
high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again…”
and I sit here and wonder—
Will it ever be home again?
...
Another day,
Another dollar.