Wildfires to the South

On northwest winds—and the scent will find your nose like nothing else. When it meets with you, it is not quite like the charred umami marking on the map a neighbor’s midday Sunday, some holiday in their mind and tending to the grill. Every moment that the former’s smoke persists, made thicker on a somewhat humid April morning in Atlanta, it is nothing short of a veil. It is not so much in the air as it is the air. Not so much contingency as atmosphere. It touches us without consent. It works into our lungs, yes, but also into our sense of space—and our memory. We remember that the world around us is capable of burning. That the world itself invites the flames in in response to negligence. That’s what a drought is. A withholding occurs. The empty handed, then, reacts.