All we want to do is be outside today but the smoke from the wildfires has made the air hazy and weighted. We’re sneaking out anyway, to the cafe, the bookstore, onto the waters of the bay to scan for dolphins, and to think of the lighthouses in storms.

Here in the garden the magnolia stretches graciously. Smoke sifts the sunset into orange. I wonder at each breath, how strange to inhale the cinders of carbon set to forest, so many thousands of miles away.