How High We Go in the Dark

by Sequoia Nagamatsu

she was just trying to keep track of it all because it didn’t seem like anybody else noticed or cared that we kept making the same mistakes, that hate in a neighborhood or injustice in a state ran like poison through veins, until another ice shelf collapsed or another animal went extinct. Everything is connected, she’d say. And I’d tell her, You’re only one person and you only have one life.

My father used to say our planet and everyone on it was made of pure possibility and that’s what made us special, made us able to create, become anything we wanted.

I’ll certainly have some affinity for the West Coast (particularly the San Francisco Bay Area) since I spent my teen years and early twenties there, but I kind of consider myself to not really have a home base in a traditional sense. My home exists only in memories and with relationships I have with people.