#ok wanna know whats funny but infuriating his name is sage And this kid at a job I worked at used to burn sage in the evening

[cascadianights]

How is it

That even in the midst of fire and smoke

I can't stop thinking how the smell of sweetgrass on the breeze reminded me of you

Even when it'd been years since I'd last seen your face.

I can't stop thinking about your warm hands taking mine, teasing out the cold while we lay under the stars.

That was the night I realized how quickly the constellations dance across the sky, Milky Way disappearing behind the distant mountains while I tell you the story of the Pleiades.

I can't stop thinking of the sunsets, and the waves crashing against the rocks. The drives to the edge of town, the late night walks on quiet streets.

But

The other day I didn't hear from you until after you were supposed to be at my place, seeing my garden for the first time in a summer spent among your haunts.

You apologized, instead of doubling down. But. You also didn't show up. You offered to make it up to me, with yet another step into your world. Something I wanted for so long that my hesitation now, as I frown at the field of flowers you have yet to know of me, feels like betrayal.

Campfire smoke wreathed with the smell of your body wash, the feeling of lying on your chest and of kissing your fingers and of you behind me with hands on my hips and mouth on my neck.

The night you didn't show, the sky hummed with heat lightning and far-off thunder as a summer storm blew in from the coast. Rain and fire beat down upon the hills around the valley.

When I woke, the sky was grey again and the sun red. I picked blueberries while old women talked about their daughters sleeping in barns and friends returning to find homes turned to ash.

I think about nights spent over cold meals, waiting for you to show. A Thanksgiving spent alone, watching the sun rise and sink into the hills and waiting for you to call. The fury and insecurity and desperate want to be chosen.

To be enough, without being too much. To communicate clearly enough that it could change your actions. To make you understand. To hear you say you loved me, just once.

The mountains where we used to watch the stars burned this year. The valley is on fire, as is much of southern Canada. The streets in the desert ran with water as a hurricane filled Death Valley.

This is the hottest summer on record, a dozen days over 100. The coldest summer of the rest of my life. "The fires happen every year now, you may as well get used to it."

Is it true that the opposite of love isn't hate, but indifference? They say people never change, even though the entire history of our species has been just that. But cycles repeat, and the earth below my feet is split and cracked and bleeding.

I used to wonder if I was only drawn to you because of the conflict, the tectonic push and pull. But all that came later, when we chose to stop seeing one another. It was addicting, but I'd fallen for the soft look in your eyes and your crooked smile long before that.

I thought it would be so difficult to be around you again, but it's as easy as breathing - only difficult when the haze of uncertainty creeps in, offers to spend time followed by an out or a quick "only if you want to." Only difficult when the time and will slip from you, and the ghost of that 21 year old wracked with pain returns.

We dance around it, but talk all night. We are careful that a touch never lingers, but then you call me at 3am when the rest of the world exhausts you. When I stay over I sleep on the couch, but I stay over often, and my heart twists and turns in my chest when you sing in the morning and in the shower.

It's odd to know someone so intimately and think you may never see them again. The childhood scars, the stories, the way you still feel like you could've made a better impression on their grandmother.

The names of cousins and best friends, god kids and figures around town - who's gone who's in jail, who's doing well who still needs to get their shit together. Their first love. Their favorite places.

We spent 5 years apart before we could talk. I don't want to spend another 5 regretting. I want a future with you, and I'm terrified of a mistep that launches us back into pain and prevents that. I want you, but I don't want my heart broken again.

Ash on the curling leaves, on the bursting blackberries, on the windshield driving to you. Smoke and sage and sweetgrass on the air. The taste of berries and apples sweetened with honey and the ghost of your lips on mine. Sweet and sticky and aching with something undefinable.