It's 2017 and the world is rejecting us.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, Trump. The world is fighting back against all the destruction we’ve caused with a savageness of its own. I stand here in San Francisco, miles away from the fires that are ravaging the areas in which I grew up, talking to my mother and begging her to begin packing before the fire reaches her, as ash falls like snowflakes in front of me. The Sun is a sickly red as it pierces through the thin veil of ash in the air. 

My mother says they couldn’t see the Sun at all yesterday. The ash was too thick. Somehow that led us to the conversation of the mandatory evacuation they had already had to face. Though they have been allowed to return home now, the fear is that winds will force them to leave again. My grandfather, who passed in April, resides in my mother’s home as ash in a beautiful urn while we struggle through our year of mourning before releasing him back to the world. She says to me “Yeah, yeah.. I’ll pack. Last time we had only ten minutes to pack before they forced us to leave. You’d be proud of me… I grabbed Grandpa.”

As Frank Ocean crooned:

It’s hell on Earth and the city’s on fire 

Inhale, in hell there’s heaven.
If my mother, being rained on by falling ash, can still find humor in all of this, then the rest of us need to show strength and help those in need pull through. To my friends and family in Sonoma County, I wish you luck. Prayers out to you and yours.
-SANE