everything I couldn't fit in a text
on what I'd say/not say about losing a home to fire
I was writing to one of my dear friends who lives in Los Angeles as I was looking at his location on the Watch App, my pointer finger hovering over his home as if in some way I could hold the ever-expanding red radius of fire away from him. As if I could keep anyone that I love safe.
Because of you, he wrote me, I have been telling my friends to video their homes before they evacuate.
I began to write him a long note about everything else I wanted him and his beloveds to know, the things they might hear, the grief that would close in, strange and unsettling, even the ways in which living somewhere that is not your home wears on you in ways that you don’t anticipate until you wake up threadbare and snapped, slamming a temporary door to a temporary house that you know you are grateful for but that y…