Sometimes when I hate my body, for its brokenness, its susceptibility to illness, injury, and disease, I go outside. Even if just for a few minutes, even if it’s too hot, or even if I can barely walk. I try to breathe, take in the oxygen gifted by our Texas live oaks more directly than sucking it through our gypsum plaster walls and dust-crusted vents. I look for little signs I’m not alone. A screeching grackle hops on one leg, a half-dried worm struggles on the sunbleached sidewalk until I nudge it into the grass. I wonder if the bare and weed-riddled patches of our lawn will get us an HOA notice, although the lawn looks perfectly happy displaying its imperfections. A few of the large-bloom magnolias have browned edges, and aphids seem to have chewed holes into our neighbors’ magenta roses. All of these blemishes, injuries, and inconsistencies help me release my expectations, accept that life can be a struggle, and know that I’m doing my best. I know that I’m part of the natural world and I’m not alone. Taking a Spring Drive in the Hopefully Not Too Distant Future after Franny Choi You see that field over there? How it flourishes with food and flora? The fire-red turkscaps, orange squash blossoms, and pink evening primroses weren’t there before. The land had been slabbed with cold gray concrete. Thick razor-wire-topped walls enclosed people as punishment. Those on the outside were told that was what safety looked like. In the sweltering Texas summer heat, so thick it smothered, you could drive past it, this same area, and know there were humans baking in that building. At night, if you turned down the radio, you could hear their suffocating cries. You reminded yourself it was for the best, necessary for you to sleep soundly in your air-conditioned home, knowing every scary potential scenario was locked away in that oven. They could never reach you. But when you reached in, those years ago and with all our hands, inside and out, we clawed away at that concrete, our teeth sawed through the steel bars. All of our hands, smooth, callused, burned, or scared, they came together to break something down, but that was just the first step. Together we put in the work and built something new, something that flourishes.
