Johanna and I spend extra time in the morning to stitch X’s through our blisters. She tells me to leave a tag of thread hanging to wick the blister fluid. Then I bandage it up and Vaseline my feet and slide socks over. My toes squish, like mud. I hobble out the door stiff as … Continue reading 7. Dogs Are Barking
6. But First: The Nights
We sleep in bunk beds on plastic mattresses with plastic pillows and no sheets or pillowcases or blankets. We are pilgrims of simple needs. We sleep, when we sleep, one atop the other in tight straight rows down the room. The room is an old monastery, or it is a converted apartment stack, or it … Continue reading 6. But First: The Nights
5. One by One by One
Today we are three. Johanna—the Brit—announces in the morning that she will join us. She says it as simply as that: “I think that I will join you.” Johanna is from Liverpool. She has a green and purple wrap that she bought in South Africa, which she drapes herself in like a flag. “Mum thought … Continue reading 5. One by One by One
4. Bananas
If the first day was for faith, as my mom said, then the second is for pain. We wake in our stuffy shed, groaning to get upright. I creak open the screen door. Fog hovers at leaf level around us, like a tarp held by twisty pine poles. We brought our clothes inside last night … Continue reading 4. Bananas
3. Waymark
At the hostel I bounce my pack in my hands, then on my back. My mom ties our leftovers—the salted cod in the foil-topped bowl—into one of her nylon grocery sacks and loops the handles through a cinch-strap at the top of my pack. It’s mid-morning when we finally leave. We tread over cobbles towards … Continue reading 3. Waymark
2. What the Map Lacks
It’s 8 am when we sit down for lunch. We’re on layover in Amsterdam and neither of us has slept. “It’s 3 in the afternoon,” corrects my mom. “In Europe.” I have no appetite for food but order a liter of beer. My throat is so raw from old airplane air I consider this medicine. … Continue reading 2. What the Map Lacks
1. Last Days
(June) Sometime in recent months the long low season slid into spring. Brick sky crumbled into pebbly blue with whipping wind through the hilltop campus. Where was I? Under tube lighting, my desk one of five forming a G around our shared office. We are on the interior, windowless side of the hallway. Our chairs … Continue reading 1. Last Days
Prologue: Daughter, Lover, Pilgrim, I
(December) Southern Baja: idling in the car with doors open and the shrug of flat desert horizon in every direction. I held the map open on my lap but didn’t look at it. My mom swiveled her attention from the map back to the frail porcelain sky, where seams of white cloud to the west … Continue reading Prologue: Daughter, Lover, Pilgrim, I
