When I was very little, my Mom took me on a trip to Arizona. She was strong back then, a long-time hiker just like my dad was when the two still knew each other. When we climbed through Sedona National Park, she’d put me on her back when I got tired. I complained and moped the whole way up, but not when we got to the top of Wilson Mountain.
What happened next must have happened around midday because we started the hike in the morning, but for some reason, in all of my memories, the moment happened at golden hour. I climbed from her shoulders and looked out at the old, out at the red of the desert, and my mom reached up and held my hand, and the aching legs and moping stopped, and I was more than myself; I was not alone; I was other people.
Then we flew back home and respectively fell apart. But I am there now. After golden hour, after the sunset, I am standing alone in the chilly desert dark, higher than anyone else who might be hiding in the rocks below me.
The sand flashes, it is a windshield, then it is sand, then it is a mirror, then it is sand, and then it is a mirror again, and pulls me.
It pulls me so damn hard. Harder than it’s been pulling me. Harder than I’ve ever had to fight against in my life. Hard enough that I never ever want to fight again, but for some reason, I cannot stop fighting. Something won’t let me.
The mirror is wide below me, but the sand, and the rocks, and the stars are all still there. The night is a promise of sunrise, and that promise pours into a secret, red part of my brain sealed off from the rest of me. It makes me feel strong, and more than whole, like I am on my mom’s shoulders.
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