Below my hillside perch, a thousand fireworks dazzle in dots across the Wasatch Valley at sunset. Above, smog smears away the silhouetted Rockies with smells more metallic than the wildfires to come and come. So much tension I can no longer unsee, unbreathe, despite beauty. 

I live somewhere between Pioneer and Pie-and-Beer Day, between startling awe for spring snow and glaring down refineries and simple stories. In-between is a place. My place. My lungs marked invisibly by a lifetime here, lungs equivalent to smoking a pack a day for 29 years, lungs that belted children’s hymns, inhaled the first whiff of farmers’ market peaches, gulped the briny wind from off the lake. I’ve tried leaving. Now, I try staying. Seeing. Using these lungs to speak.