Dear Reader,

Today, of all days, I am dreaming of my mountain. The one near Taos, New Mexico that I have escaped to for a week the past two years.

It’s about this mountain I want to write about tonight. See, this was the last time I wrote. The last time this year I felt like a writer. This was the last time I dreamed that works could spill out of my fingers.

I was on the mountain for the annual Kimbilio Fellowship.

I was a fellow last year and this year I went back, one year wiser and with my own room. YES! I had some space and it was brilliant. Everything I needed.  Since Hurricane Harvey, I had lost my space, my office at work where at the end of a work day I could close the door and write for an hour or two. It was blissful.

What was also blissful was that I walked around my mountain, in the beyond clean air, and felt inspired by the rest of the writers around me.

I miss them. I miss their energy. I miss their idealism.

Today was a tough day.

My mother has cancer. Yup. She does. And we’re going through the process of getting that bastard lump out of her body but it’s taking its toll on our psyche.

Sometimes, medical professionals are assholes. They forget that you are living through a trying time and they go out of their way to make it worse.

And you’re already upset.

And you’re already on the edge of crying, every minute.

And you’re angry in between the moments of delirious, mind-bending fear.

And these people can’t even give you a kind word.

But on my mountain, there were kind people.

 

And the kind people made sure you were okay.

 

 

And the kind people made it their business to add to the good.

 

And on my mountain, there were smiles everywhere.

 

 

Even in bunches, there were smiles.

 

And the sky was endless with possibilities.

 

 

So through the haze of cancer, work, family, and other life struggles, how I wish I could be back on my mountain with those smiles and that sky and remember what it was like to breathe.

Gasping for air,

-Icess