Fire Garden

i wrote this while working in a program for new writers. on wednesdays, two of the teachers would be contractually obligated to read our writing aloud to the group of 300+ teens. i had never read my work in public before. i had something like 6k poems and was panicking about it. none of them are good enough. sometimes the train is howling. it is hard, actually, sometimes, even as an adult.

and then i thought - what is one thing i wish i could tell all of them. each of these 300 kids. what did i need to hear, at 16?

i wanted to tell them about the day you wake up, and the sun feels warm finally. i wanted to tell them about carving a life out of soapstone, your hands turning bloody. i wanted to tell them that sometimes yes - it actually does feel easy. i wanted to tell them about weddings and cookie dough and long road trips. about albums of new music and old friends laughing and the sound of snow falling.

you will learn the pattern of the train. you will learn to close your eyes when you hear the engine rumbling. you will learn to let yourself have the grey days in their lily-soft numbness. sometimes it will feel like life is wet paint, and god has smeared your canvas across a sewer grate. sometimes it will be so boring it isn’t even pronounceable - the tenacious, soundless blankness. survival isn’t just ugly nights and wild mornings. it is also the steady, unimportant moments. it is just driving with your seatbelt on. it is calling a friend on the way home. it is burying your face into the fur of your dog.

when i had finished reading this poem aloud, the auditorium was silent for a solid minute. someone stood up to take a picture of where it had been projected onto a screen, and then three more people followed the action, and then - like a bad internet story, people remembered they were supposed to be clapping. kids came up to me after it - thank you for writing that. i think i hear a train coming.

i would write this differently now, i think, but it has been 7 years. i still live by the tracks. i also haven’t picked up a blade in over 10 years. the scars are still there, but these days i only pick up scissors to cut my hair. i know why you can’t tell your mom about it. i know how the numbness slips over everything, a restless horrible cotton. i know how when you dropped the dish, you weren’t crying about the broken glass. i know about feeling like all the roads have closed their exits, that you aren’t supposed to still-be-here - and yet.

i am still here, and still yours, and i haven’t forgotten. what i’m saying is if any hope is calling to you - i know it’s hard, but you have to listen. i’m saying keep driving, but slow down the car. sit down in the shower, i’m not judging you. we can stay in the dark with the good hot water and do nothing but stare. notice the stab wound. make it through another tuesday.

i know what it is like to miss yourself. do what you need to. come home to me. i am writing to you, my past self, from the future. i’ll be waiting for you.

I've had several people reach out to me, claiming to be in a similar situation to the puppygirl from the article. Afraid that they're not doing enough. Afraid that their friends are about to dump and leave them. So far I have tried to give advice and encouragement, and despite thinking deeply about how to help them, I haven't been 100% satisfied with my responses. If that applies to you, please know that you're already doing your best. I know it's really really hard right now, and you're in a deep hole, trying to dig your way out of it. Even though my intentions were good, it was rude of me to toss down a little self-help leaflet onto your head and claim it's a rope to pull you out. Just keep taking it one day at a time.

As for the rest of us, the ones who aren't trapped by the weight of disability or mental illness or unemployment, we need to be working every single day to build out networks of mutual aid. The girls who are currently disabled need us to have better tools to help them. We also need those systems for ourselves. We're all getting old, we all are at risk of job loss, or injury, or traumatic events. We need food distros, and medical collectives, and clothing swaps, and volunteer mechanics and IT professionals. There's work to be done, but we're disconnected from each other, disorganized. We form polycules and "found families" as poor imitations of support networks, reaching for them because they're easy tools to use. But they're not good tools.

First of all, they're not mutual, automatic, or impersonal. They rely on everyone being on good terms with each other. As if asking someone to prove their worth before feeding them is only unhealthy when the state does it, but is somehow okay if you're doing it to a friend or partner. They're also not organized. Unless you have a team of friends who are meeting monthly to discuss availability, resources, address burnout, and devise a plan of care... you're flying blind. Even just having a group chat for it puts you in a better position to help, and to be helped because your friends will know what to do for you.

People have done this before. There's resources out there for you to find and cobble together a solution that works. I certainly don't have all the answers, even if I am good at describing the shape of the problem. All I know is that it will be easier if we all work together on it. Think about what resources you would want your friends to have if they suddenly had to care for you over months. Think about what you need to make it easier to care for your friends. Think about how we can build resilient communities against mass disabling events like COVID, or mass firing events like AI layoffs. Work towards those solutions. You will need these networks eventually. Your friends need them now.

I get a lot of versions of this question, and I answer it seriously every time, because it’s both important and not important at all. Anyone who asks respectfully gets my whole ass answer.

It’s just not really about that. My job isn’t about defending the idea of hurting someone else. It’s about stopping the state from inflicting further hurt, torture, pain. It’s about pushing back for some fairness against a monumentally stacked system. And it’s about stuff that’s normal human stuff that counts as crime for some reason.

Yeah, it’s hard to do a sex abuse case. Sometimes the images stick around and it bothers me. But honestly? Mostly those cases have real plausible theories of innocence or they’re cases that I will lose because the evidence is there, and the question is not whether the perpetrator will go to jail but how long.

Those cases are so rare, though. I get so much pointless bullshit. Felony of a teen taking mom’s car without permission. Two kids that try to break into a car and get so scared by the alarm that they run away. Trespassing on dad’s house because his new girlfriend wants you to stop coming around. It’s just human stuff, and the violence of the state is not necessary or helpful.

I also reject the idea of punishment completely. The state has a responsibility to stop people from hurting other people again. But inflicting pain doesn’t do it, we know this by now. So I argue for mercy and for real solutions to real problems. I’m here to build a future, not get caught up with doing violence to someone because of the past.

So yeah, sometimes it’s hard, but mostly my conscience is dead clear: I’m not responsible for the crime. The damage has been done. I want to start the healing process, and I want it for everyone involved. When that’s not possible, I just want to tell the authorities they don’t get to just Do What They Want.

The more I do this job, the more I am a genuine pacifist who is against violence in all forms, and actually I don’t see a contradiction between that and what I do for a living. State violence is a pervasive evil that tears apart families, communities, and countries, and it’s far more damaging and awful than any individual crime. The average prosecutor has more blood on their hands than a serial killer, but it’s invisible: people who died in jail, who froze to death on the street, who were shot in a drug deal. Their violence begets violence.

When I get blood on my hands, it’s because I put my hands over the wounds and try to stop the flow. I’m okay with it.