Basalt

My grandparents point to columnar basalt outside the car window. At the end of each day they ask, “have you learned anything?”, patiently awaiting my report. I learn how to be a good hiker, which berries to forage, I hug trees with rough bark much bigger than my wingspan. We laugh and take pictures.

I’ve been telling myself that the hopeful, explorative heart within me had turned to columnar basalt: dark and sleek and hard. How to exist with constant cataclysms? I move through the city with my head down and focus on light where I can find it - friends, cooking, magnolia blossoms and chirps of birds. I listen to podcasts about the news and alternate them with ones about pop culture. I’m fine.

But something wakes me in the middle of the night: a deep ache in my chest, a little orb of anxiety deep behind my ribcage, fractaling out. War, the constant chipping at democracy and people’s basic rights, houselessness in my city. Instead of rolling down the rockface like water, this barrage has found cracks.

I still believe kindness is exponential. I refuse to believe there isn’t enough for everyone. I tried to stop hoping as a way to protect myself, but I am so in awe of the tenacity and tenderness of the human spirit. The stony barricade I thought I had built has fractured, each column loose from another. Everyone deserves to try a berry warmed by the sun.

I admit I am scared into the darkness.