a mountain that wasn't burning
Do you guys want an album of poetry? Good, I made one.
Today I am 43 years old. When I was 14 years old, I wanted to die. Again at 16, and 26. I'm glad I stuck it out. It took me this long to be who I am.
Who I am was stung by a bee for the first time this week. Who I am has been a bit of a baby about it. I watched it happen—the bee rear up her ass and drive it into my left shin. I do not know if she knew the stakes. The annihilation of her own body. I don't understand what I did. She'd approached me, circling, frantic. It had been a hot, dry summer. The warmest on record. (So far.) The flowers didn't bloom.
Last week, before the rain finally came, I started watering all the courtyard plants deeply from the rain barrel, delighted by the slow act of it, thought I'll bring the flowers back myself, if the skies won't do it for us. Within days, the russian sage perked up, the bluebeard too, the hummingbird mint and lantana. One morning I noticed two bees. There haven't been many this summer. The next morning, a small cloud of bees, busy at their work. Delighted. The next morning, I sat at the picnic table for hours, under the shade of the new umbrella, and the next again, when a bee approached me, circling, frantic. I poured a little water in a cap and placed it at the other end of the table. The bee circled still, dropped low and landed on my leg beneath the table. Then she chose violence.
Who can blame her? It was a hot, dry summer. Nothing lives forever. Most bees work to live, then work to death. Maybe she wanted to do a little damage on her way out. Put me—who waited until September to water the flowers with the rain we caught from the sky—back in my place. Remind me living hurts, sometimes. You live anyway, gather and do what you can, share what you found with your friends. It took me 43 years to get stung by a bee. I'm here to tell you about it.
I also made an album, it's out today. Recorded ten poems published in 2025, asked Jared to make them beautiful. He used synthesizers, birdsong, water sounds, magic, and did what I asked him to do.
It's called a mountain that wasn't burning.
You can buy it for $5 on Bandcamp here, or more if you want. 100% proceeds will support Chicago United Solidarity Project, a Southside mutual aid organization building power and supplying families with food, pet and school supplies, diapers, clothing, and water.
We've been working on this for months, most of the year. Life happens and keeps happening. Thank the god of anything good for patient friends, for poems, for birds, for the flowers that eventually bloom, for Nermin who designed the gorgeous cover—she asked me for my favorite poem from the album, printed it out on french paper and cut it up, wove it into an image of clouds, then shaped it into a mountain. Tell 14-year-old me, the one two years older, the young woman who 17 years ago desperately wanted to stop existing—baby, you have the most marvelous life. The most generous friends. Two dogs and an accordion. A courtyard nestled in the hills in the southwestern corner of a country your people's people have been in for ten thousand years, probably more. Your grays are coming in nicely.
Anyway, it's my birthday and I'm off to walk up a mountain, if the rain holds off. Whatever the weather, I'm here. Telling you all about it.
