to touch something soft

on becoming an accomplished firekeeper

For 28 years, I was out looking for myself in other people. I dug under collarbones and crevasses that were not mine, I fantasized about what it would feel like to peel back the layers and finally see the full reflection of self— glaring back at me through the eyes of someone else. I got everything I wanted, and for some reason, I was still nowhere to be found.

Disoriented, I reached inward to rekindle what was needed to pull me through. But the embers had gone cold to the touch.

“Always build upwards in a teepee shape,” my dad demonstrates to seven-year-old me, building the campfire in a small pit in my uncle’s wood. “The oxygen must filter through to keep the hearth warm.” I am bold and stubborn and eager, I do not know what bitterness feels like. I was taught to build a fire from scratch. Without a match, without a lighter, in the rain, when there is snow, from a stone. How did I forget the fire within myself?

Bri stokes the fire in the canyons of Escalante, Bri stokes the fire at Lake Powell, Bri builds a fire each night at our new campsite. We are on the road for 30 days living in a van. The fires are built and the fires rekindle the taste of freedom, so Bri is always tending it.

Her eye is always on the fire, she does so naturally, and she always has her eye on mine. Before her, it had been a long while since anyone cared if my fire was lit at all. I chop the veggies and collect the wood, remembering what the coals feel like next to my skin. Before this year, campfires were a mere dream construct from childhood. I was not allowed to have fires. I was not allowed to leave my apartment. To need to ask permission with permission always being denied. I was contained in my lifeless apartment, and the hearth became cold and bitter. On this trip, I remember what the world feels like, tastes like— it burns a yearning so deeply in my chest that I am never the same again.

Though I’m turning 33, it is only my 13th year, because I am learning what it feels like to have the light as mine, fully, for the first time. I am learning things I should have mastered on the cusp of adolescence when your limbs are still awkward and the world grants you more leeway for being so naive. I am embarrassed by my immature nature. I agree to learn anyway.

I am finally learning how to say no, that my body is my own, that boundaries do not harm other people, they only harm yourself. I am learning how to be gentle with my mind and not speak so cruelly to the one person who has never loved me more. I am learning what it feels like to be taken on a first date, to be courted and loved and protected. That love doesn’t have to mean sacrificing until all signs of life have gone cold to the touch. Love had stopped leaving in bodybags. I have just now learned that I actually have a say in how others treat me. I keep those who tend my fire, close by.

I am learning what it feels like to have these tenders who say “come over” or “you’re not too much” or “your secret is safe with me.” I am less likely to cowar and recoil. I am learning how to nourish my body with the meals I cook, prepared by my own hands, no longer begging to be fed by someone who holds the endless hunger over my head.

I am learning to brush my hair correctly, rather than ripping it out from the root. To spend time putting lotions on my face, my legs, my scars— that I have a body that longs to be cared for. I put the plush blankets on my bed and buy a plethora of fuzzy socks to fill my drawers. I was never allowed to buy socks before. I buy whatever I want, with reason. Sometimes, I don’t need a reason other than I am allowed to want.

I’m learning how to navigate using a compass on a trail, how to pack the lightest possible for the trip of a lifetime, I am learning that my own inner compass was all I’ve ever needed, that the little kernel of light buried deep within can guide me through the most catastrophic, moonless skies.

I am a woman but the girl who’s still learning and eager to save the world is still inside of me. She is me. She is learning how to care for her own world, first.

“It’s only downhill from here”,  a lady at the cafe sarcastically murmurs to me when she overhears it’s my birthday— when I appear a little too grateful and a little too eager. Is it only downhill? Does she not yet know of the joy younger me never experienced? The way I have cultivated magic in my life despite it all? How my hands are no longer terrified of being empty, that I have stopped clawing and outstretching my hands, desperate for any form of attention to cling to? How safe my life became when I let go of the things I told myself I just had to live with. The things we leave behind leave room for the light to grow. For the light to fester. For my wounds to no longer need licking and the dormant embers gently catch flame, the fire’s slow, hypnotic dance returning to my spirit— and in turn— the way I view the world.

Doesn’t she know my spirit is back? Glowing brighter than ever? That I am now an accomplished firekeeper, tending to all around me who have let their embers go cold, who have loved men who douse their flames, who forget what the warmth feels like?

I smile because it’s not my job to tell her. To tell anyone, ever again. It is my job to hold it carefully to my chest, extending out to the needs of anyone who has neglected their own inner spirit for too long. To serve as a reminder that they too, can catch fire.

“The embers always catch one way or another”, Bri says to me, the wind hard at her back as she uses her body to shield the pit from the gusts, gently blowing on the low glimmer. She is always protecting. I tilt my head back and watch as the building embers dance up, and up, and up, into the night sky, slowly taking their rightful place in the constellations. We all feed one another.

I am no longer on an endless journey, searching for myself in other people. I see fragments of myself coming to the surface in my own mirror. I coax the light to linger gently—burning there— under my own collarbone, beneath the base of my spine, through the tips of my fingers— and offer it gently to the world when the darkness seeps in.

….To touch something soft and glowing x

If interested, Limited Edition Prints of this piece will be available for two weeks only. Once that window closes, this piece will never have reproductions again

To learn more about collecting: