Chrysalis

When I look up at the sky, I get the feeling I’m underwater in a swimming pool that somebody pissed in. Sunlight barely filters through. I gape like a tourist, I say God, those poor people in Canada. I open the window even though the air quality index is a screaming arterial red. To my surprise the smell isn’t oppressive, isn’t demonic, doesn’t make me cry or vomit: it’s comforting, a cozy woodsmoke smell that ropes me and leads me doglike back to my childhood. It’s the smell of the fireplace at my grandparents’ house on Christmas. My grandfather would stoke the fire with a poker, chuckling because the calluses on his own gnarled-wood hands negated the need for gloves, but my lungs have no calluses, my lungs are not made for these particles that attach themselves unnoticed to my tissues and slip into my bloodstream, and all at once I remember, I say God, that’s the smell of dying trees. I close the window and lower the shade so I don’t have to look at the urine-filled sky. I go back to my sweat-soaked bed, where I rattle in the soft hollow of my cocoon. I already know I won’t emerge as a butterfly. I look into the darkness, I say God, nobody is coming to save us.