SANTA FE, NM-

One summer I collected Monarch butterflies and pinned them to an old walnut board in the family barn. I was eleven and chubby with a Dorothy Hamill haircut. My younger sisters and I built endless Mexican
blanket forts in our battered living room and dressed our long-suffering dog in my dad’s blue boxer shorts. My mom decided she couldn’t take one more minute of our endless muggy summer, and
she signed us up for the one-week August hell known as Arts and Crafts camp at the Town Hall.

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SANTA FE, NM-

The Sunday before last I mixed fine gray illegal powder with a shot glass of orange juice. It didn’t dissolve. The silt eyed me from the bottom, thick, resolute. It lifted its shoulders in smug ennui.

You’re a poser, girl. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, mixing us with frickin’ orange juice? Geeze. Get a grip. Go back home, little girl. You’re outta your league. This will end in death.

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SANTA FE, NM-

I shifted from fourth gear to third as I ditched a Santa Fe strip-mall street for the steep grind of uneven asphalt that split a west-side mesa into two snowy halves. My young son, 9, leaned against the door, sketch pad on lap. His hand knew the routine, knew our unkempt roads meant his spaceships sported jagged edges. (more…)