It’s Just Us Down Here

And we each hold each other’s lives in our hands

Illustration courtesy of the author

After the fire comes the smoke.

It blew into Albuquerque last Tuesday on, oddly, a cold front. I’d seen the photos of orange skies raining ash and heat a thousand miles west of us, so I guess that’s what I expected: winds that burn. Instead they were frigid. They chilled us and pricked goosebumps from our skin.