Constellations // Open Drawers
by Leah Francesca Christianson
The mist rolls in so fast and thick that I wish it had a sound so I could assign it a personality. There are Trump 2020 signs next to flags boasting multi-colored weed leaves, even though the state’s legalization of cannabis is killing its most famous farmers of the plant. There are pie shops and gun shops and gas stations with cheap local beer. Five of us have driven north, leaving our cats and succulents to fend for themselves against the smoke bearing down on Oakland. On the five-hour drive, we sing Whitney Houston and pretend we are comfortable in Ry’s Subaru, Marlin, even though we are packed in like cold cuts on a deli sub. I try to check the fire’s progress, but there is no service, so I switch my phone off and tuck it away. Which is fine, really. I do not want to be reached. Not by news, work, anyone who isn’t already here.
In the grocery store, as we gather supplies for our campsite, we pull our masks tighter around our ears. Despite the sign on the door, only half the shoppers cover their faces. These are gun-toting hippies and “leave me alone” conservatives; not the “do this or else” types. My friends and I are the “let’s go camping” sort of liberals, not the “meat is murder” variety, so we coexist alright for a long weekend.
Our campsite in Patrick’s Point State Park is tucked into a cave of green—overgrown bushes, aching redwoods, mossy stumps. Slender trunks boast unimaginable heights, only occasionally interrupted by charred gray. Less than a quarter mile away, there is a pebbly beach, full of driftwood gnarled like bleached and tortured bones, where we toss rocks into the mouth of an empty beer bottle and eat the day’s only slice of sun. As waves barrel out and crash all dramatic and empty, I am fully held by this place, by this moment. It is good to remember how that feels.
A year ago, almost exactly, I left one life to return to another. In the life I left, I could never keep anything shut.
"You always leave drawers open,” my former partner often scolded.
I hadn’t noticed this bad habit before. But as he closed his dresser, closet, bathroom cabinet, I had to admit—he was right. I left drawers open for anyone to drum with shins and noggins. Why? Was I worried I’d have to grab something at a moment’s notice, the need so urgent I couldn’t be slowed by a slab of wood? Did I want to move gingerly around a home not quite made mine; make no more sound than necessary? Did some part of me know (even then, in the pit of love) that I’d be yanking what still belonged to me from those drawers, zipping wrinkled t-shirts into suitcases, driving back west?
At the campsite, the morning plays a familiar tune. Marlin stands guard at its mouth. I wake up second because no one is ever up before Joey. Maggie pours coffee into canteens that still smell like last night’s whiskey. Len asks about breakfast.
South of us, the smoke thickens. The 2020 fire season came to collect, as it will continue to do, even when there is no more land with which to pay. Every year, there are fires and disease and police violence and hate and corruption. But this year, they are all amplified, perhaps because there are no distractions. I am disgusted with myself because I do not appreciate my life. Instead, I constantly try to escape it. I feel such expanding gratitude for my home, while also feeling the hollow swell of endless options. I thought that would change once I started work that I cared about, moved to a place I wanted to stay forever, found a person who helped me feel still. But I did all those things and my heels kept itching. I do not know why my heart flares up every fire season. Maybe it’s when what fuels my restlessness is dry enough to spark. Maybe that’s why I like Humboldt, with its green mud and orange moss and wet leaves, too slick for anyone to drag a match across.
When I return home, I start talking about Humboldt like it belongs to me, convinced that my small devastations would no longer rank if I moved to a beach shack blanketed by fog. It’s ridiculous. But what hasn’t been? During quarantine, alone in my apartment, my spice cabinet creaked open whenever it pleased, as if I lived with a friendly ghost who didn’t want me to skimp on Paprika. Early mornings, I’d lurch out of bed to hush my squawking cat or make myself camera ready from the shoulders up, leaving dresser drawers to display their denim guts. Sometimes, I rolled back into my bedroom and smiled proudly at what was mine to leave ajar. Other times, I slammed my cupboards shut. Just to hear my dishes sing in their shelves. Just to make my own sweet noise. I’m not trying to embed empty realization into ringing glass, but this was when I understood the impossibility of returning to any version of one’s life. Newness is not achieved with a craned neck. I don’t mean to recast places as saviors either. I am trying to remember, as I did at an oval campsite while fires raged far enough away to forget, what needs to be gently closed and what should be left wide open.
Before all that, though. Our chairs arrange in a tight constellation around the fire. At night, Joey writes a song. Chicken cooks over open flame. An old nickname gets resurrected. It’s been two years since we ignored the smoke to climb a mountain with half a face. Moaning trees sway above our heads and I try to untangle myself from ideas about what people deserve. It is too misty to see the sky, but behind the clouds I imagine it frosted thick with stars clustered bright, alone, together.
Leah Francesca Christianson’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Watershed Review, TriQuarterly, River Teeth, Split Lip Magazine, Bending Genres, and other publications. She lives in Oakland, California and teaches at The Loft Literary Center. You can find her online @lfchristianson, or at home playing fetch with her cat.
