Read this when you're longing for water, breaks from the heat, and resistance

Few things bend me across a lap the way a midwestern horizon does. In every way that span of sky and earth is redolent with fear and narrow-mindedness, it is still the sexiest confirmation of god I know— midwest air is sex. It hangs heavy and low, sagging with a wetness that lingers. The corn sweats and their tassels shake. If you look closely you’ll see the curve of a femme’s hip contouring the fields of soybeans. I was born in a place where desert meets prairie, and saddles up against long stretches of mountains; my heart and this sack of flesh is meant for air so thick you could drown. Where ferns thrive and green lasts for miles and miles without a $300 water bill. Where cornflower and white yarrow cast spells along the stretch of highway. Where the men who lift their hand from the steering wheel to wave could easily use that same hand to reach for violence if they knew the truth.

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Anaya cocks his head to the side while driving and stares off and through my face for a few beats. “Am I missing something? I feel like I’m forgetting something”, he says slowly. “I’ve gotten three texts from friends saying I love you, I’m thinking about you.” I ask him if it’s the anniversary of his divorce. “No, and nobody would send texts like that for it anyways. Is there a new executive order I missed? Will you check?”

I scan the web in search of more terrible news. Nothing out of the ordinary surfaces and my heart breaks all over again. Nothing out of the ordinary? Hanif Abdurraqib said, “I worry, so much, about the condition of my heart, and yours.” My eyes scan over words until they begin to lose meaning after reading them over and over and over. I won’t let them. Starving. star ving. st ar vi ng. s t a r v i n g.

I pull the visor down and flip the mirror open to stare at the sleeping faces of full-bellied children in the back seat. I cry for the third time today.

All this could be different.

I don’t know, I tell him.

I stare out the window and lock in on a silo many miles away that will stay in my vision for minutes to come. Time moves like this during high-summer. All at once, too fast, and too slow. I want to clap my hands over the silo to make it all disappear.

A few minutes later I pull up social media and there it is, the first thing I see. Andrea Gibson, a friend of Anaya’s from another lifetime, has traded this realm for another. It’s Andrea is all I have to say. We both give a tear as offering. Cancer season comes to a fold while their earthly life does the same.

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We did this drive one year ago today, right at the beginning of Leo season when Anaya got word that there had been an accident.

His older brother Rei was hit by a car while walking at night. It was an accident. She didn’t see him, he stepped out, there wasn’t enough time.

Look what a year can do.

These days on the calendar haunt me— the intensity of the heat that seems to intensify everything else. Two births during summer including my own. All that I have been gifted and all that I have given. This time of year scares me, every year, and I don’t know that I’ll ever remember before it’s too late. It sneaks up on me and I hate being scared without consent. I’m scared of my children resenting the sound of my voice when most everything that comes out of it is a lecture of undoing and yet I keep on. I watch them the same way the mothers of starving babies all over the world look at their own children. I tell myself I am playing the long game and I never did care much for games. I am simultaneously full and thoroughly emptied. Leo season is for courage and fire like my triple fire sign eldest— I cling to this. Where do you shed light? I know I am not powerless, that we are not powerless, despite what they want us to believe. When I am scared I return to this place and light a candle. Where the micro shapes the macro. I don’t care much for this time of year and I’d like to change that someday— until then the deck is stacked. I’d like to pull the High Priestess and let them all fall.

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We drive thousands of miles to take our kids to Michigan waters. They swim and leap from the dock and dig up mussels for eight hours a day— their under-eyes pinked and legs tangled in lake weeds. At night they fall asleep so fast and heavy that I catch myself staring at their faces until they morph into smears and blotches. I stare at them like they’re newborns again— are they breathing? Is this dry drowning? I can’t see their eyes flutter but once my eyes adjust to the edges of their blanketed bodies and I see the rise and fall of their chests I can find my own breath. We told them we wanted them to have a snapshot of our lives as it was, sometimes, when we were kids, aimless and soaked. We delivered and so did they.

I pray for the mothers and and and whose breath has been stolen.

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The tomato plants have crawled nearly four feet and heave with fruit not yet ripe but willing. I clip basil flowers and wildflowers to put in jars. Our kids chase lightning bugs for the first time. I cry and cry some more. I waffle on whether or not to go to bookclub (I did and I was glad) and whether or not to include ‘sex worker' as one of the titles that belongs to me on my (coming soon) new website. I decide this is simply part of my micro— I am privileged enough to push back on what is seen as acceptable especially as a mother since that’s the only reason I considered leaving it out. I am in a position to be able to hold any issue that could potentially arise re: a parent at the kids’ school finding out and hating a stranger over a thing that adds yet another talking point in an effort to distract. My kids could hypothetically be impacted but I’ve lived too long and too many lives to build a house made of What If’s. Bats swoop down in search of dusk snacking. I sit with art and writers who did this very thing and said these very words five, twenty, fifty years ago. I find this to be simultaneously devastating and fueling. I revisit old recipes, shows, music— anything to offer familiarity and quell my anxiety. I bundle herbs for neighbors. I find myself drawn deeper into the first home I’ve considered a sanctuary after thirty-seven years. I dry calendula for face oil. I listen to Sarah McLaughlin’s Surfacing on repeat for several hours while reinventing my own recipe before coming up for air. All the minor arcana cards in a seven card pull are swords. I keep trying to convince my fingers to roll a proper spliff. I cut my fringe over the bathroom sink. I dice shallots for vinaigrette and when Anaya slips his arms around me, I turn and wrap them around his neck without washing them and let him take me in the kitchen. My hands are all shalloty, I say with a grin afterwards. “But mine weren’t”, and I wish you could see this man’s ability to wink with his mouth. I think about what I’ll make and what I will offer for Lughnasadh on August 1st— the day marking the first iteration of harvest season, the halfway point between summer solstice and autumn equinox. I drive a fucking car just to be somewhere else to walk— absurdity. Fat tears dangle from my lashes when I have to look at my five year old and tell him, I am not having a good time. I make strawberry syrup from strawberry tops in the blink of an eye and Anaya makes the kids strawberry oat milk in crystal glasses. My compost bin is literally overflowing and I’m doing my best to use every little thing that I can. I sit with a friend recovering from surgery. We make plans to have a family meeting with our friend-fam so Anaya can take the policy reigns of a conversation regarding AI, I can expand on the the harm it causes for artists and writers, and the four adults can yap at our kids ages five through (almost) eleven about the environmental impacts. I make greek panzanella. I find corn silks in the strangest parts of the house. I make a tremendous, fragrant mess assembling saining bundles with lavender from the garden. I read Kiese Laymon’s City Summer, Country Summer to Little and then send it with Anaya to read to Moonie at bedtime.

Don’t look away but close your eyes for a moment.

Biggest love,

xx AR

ps The second installment of the Butter Moon Chronicles will be scones and coming soon. You can revisit the first (out of four total) here-

Currently Reading: Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Currently Eating: leftover homemade basil pesto with bowties I made for the kids’ lunch the other day. We’ll finish the Greek panzanella leftovers tonight. Make a greek salad sans lettuce (or include it, as you wish), chop everything small, make a lemon/shallot/oregano vinaigrette, make a batch of homemade croutons, dress half of them with the veg and then add the rest just before serving. Make this blueberries & cream cornmeal tart with the following adjustments-

Double the recipe

Line an 8x8 pan with parchment paper

Use blackberries and blueberries, or one or the other (I did 400 grams total because I ran out of fruit and it was still 10/10)

Scale the sugar back in the shortbread- 100 grams instead of 120

Up the flour, 220 grams instead of 200

Up the cornmeal to 80 grams

Add the kernels from one ear of fresh corn to the shortbread

Bake the shortbread for 5 minutes before adding the filling

If you want to really get wild, make a sweet corn whipped cream by steeping the kernels and entire cob of three ears of corn in two cups of heavy cream. Bring it to a simmer, add a couple Tbsp of brown sugar and a sprinkle of salt. Let it steep for an hour before straining through cheesecloth and then allow it to cool for an hour before putting it in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. Whip it, add a bit of honey or sugar if needed but I personally love a whipped cream that is not very sweet. It’ll have some texture to it— I’d love to get it smoother eventually. Play around with it.

Currently Listening To: Sleeping Lotus by Joep Beving