OXYGEN IN ASH

N OUR first COVID summer, the fires outside Fort Collins, Colorado, burned so close that ash would fall from the sky—gentle as snowflakes, gentle as the dying leaves of the honey locust tree. All the clouds were smoke, a sulfur yellow and deep purple that looked like bruises in the air. The sky itself had the tender fragility of a wounded thing, evidence of a threat that threatened us all, rabbit’s hollow and family’s home. A threat outside of us but coming closer, plain to see, scenting the air with char. But in that air we knew another menace hid, one that couldn’t be seen, a fire that burned as fever inside the body; and that fear was a