“If the stillness is Volcanic/In the human face/ When upon a pain Titanic/ Features keep their place —” Emily Dickinson (175).

My parents’ alarm drags me from the world of fairies and dragons into a new day. I get up and open the curtains to let the light in. While I’m searching the drawers for my uniform, Mom comes into my room and announces that there will be no classes today. Why? Look out the window…Ecstasy paralyzes me. It’s a miracle! The street, the cars, all the roofs and trees are covered in white. I must be dreaming still. I’ll make a snowman, I’ll throw a snowball at Rosamary’s face, I’ll take a handful of ice and put it in my mouth to feel it melt! But soon I see that this snow is dirty—not white but a light gray. It moves like sand on the beach during a storm. The neighbors who are leaving their houses are all wearing masks. It´s ash. Disappointment and a thorn of fear bite my heart.

*

Every morning, when driving me to school, Mamá would turn off the radio so we could pray. This often annoyed me because she would coincidentally do it in the middle of Alejandro by Lady Gaga or during the bridge of If U Seek Amy by Britney Spears. These were my favorite songs at the time even though I didn’t speak English and had no idea what the lyrics meant. It also annoyed me that my mom’s repertoire of prayers was incredibly long and always happened in the same order. Each morning we began with “Angelito de mi guarda, O mi dulce compañía” followed by  “Gracias te doy Papa Dios, que sin merecerlo yo, me has dejado amanecer” and “Dulce Madre, no te alejes,” “No nos dejes caer en tentación,” “Dios te salve María,” “San Miguel Arcangel, defiendenos en la lucha” ending with “Espíritu Santo fuente de luz, ilumínanos.”

The whole thing took roughly ten to fifteen minutes to get through, and the drive to school took twenty. There was not a lot of time for the songs I wanted to listen to. The routine was impenetrable. We didn’t even let drivers honking or yelling “Pendeja!” at my mom stop us from finishing our prayers. The only times she allowed to be interrupted were the mornings when we reached the Boulevard del Cinco de Mayo, and suddenly, the volcano appeared before us, covered in snow and spitting a black chalice of smoke. 

The volcano is approximately 65 kilometers (41 miles) away from Puebla, but from the Boulevard it looks as though you could crash against it if you’re driving too fast. It looks taller than any skyscraper in the city, and when there’s snow on it, it is so breathtaking that you’ll hear everyone you know make a comment on how stunning the volcano looks that day. 

In the mornings we faced it, a gasp would cut off whatever prayer we were reciting. We would look at it and feel grateful for the gift of this sight. My mom would sometimes say: “Now, this is our biggest proof that God exists.”

*

Centuries ago, the Aztec Empire ruled the valley. They were tyrannical: they forced small kingdoms to give them their crops, as well as their strongest men and most beautiful women to perform human sacrifices. In defense, the Tlaxcalteca kingdom rebelled for its freedom. The Tlaxcalteca princess was called Iztaccihuatl; she was the most desired woman in the land because of her fiery beauty, and the impenetrable authority she inspired. Iztaccihuatl was madly in love with the warrior Popocatépetl. Their romance was compared to the stars: inapprehensible in its depth but brilliant—the source of their light. When war against the Aztecs broke out, they were forced to separate so Popocatépetl could fight for their people. At this farewell, the lovers promised each other unfailing fidelity—if one of them died, the other would have to seek death in order to meet in eternity.

*

She swallowed the rosary. I sighed—I felt each of the black beads fall into my own throat. Then she began dancing in her pale, skin-colored underwear; the men behind her followed her steps in high heels.

It was hard to tell if they were really men because I had never seen a man wearing a wig, or moving like that. They reminded me of the girls who practiced ballet in school.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Michael’s iPod. We watched Lady Gaga press her waist against a man’s butt. They made out. They humped each other on a nun´s bed. Men in leather suits kissed. 

We were eight years old—we didn’t know what sex was. To us it was all dancing, a style of dancing we had never seen. Even so, I could feel that this clip belonged to the category of shows that my parents would never let me watch on TV. My stomach began to ache, my heart beat fast and my breathing slowed. I didn’t understand why my body was reacting this way. I loved it. It was like a tiny taste of adult life—of everything I wasn’t, of everything I wasn't allowed to be.

I knew that if I told Mamá that Michael and I had watched the video, she would get angry. She would tell Michael’s mother, and he would probably be grounded, his iPod taken from him for a month or more. He would hate me—our friendship would be ruined. I would take this secret to the grave. I was angry with Michael; I didn’t understand how he found the video or why he showed it to me, putting me in a position where I had no choice but lying to Mamá. At the end of the video, while Lady Gaga lies on a black velvet bed in her latex nun costume, seemingly dead, Michael asked me, “Do you think she has a ‘chorizo’ down there?”

*

Iztaccihuatl could wait eons. Each night, she counted all the stars in the sky, and if a new star had suddenly appeared, she interpreted it as a divine message that her lover would soon return. At sunset, she looked out over the fields war had not touched yet. She dreamed of mountains, though she had never seen them. She thought that her love alone was comparable to their size.

Popocatépetl cut head after head. His body was always soaked in blood, his skin had begun to dye into a deep red. His enemies called him the Hungry Flame. He could sense victory approaching. He was tired of the war´s slug pace. He always thought of his princess—he did not want the glory of battle, he only wanted the blessing of being by her side.

*

The creaking of Hell´s doors opening. That was the sound. The image: a sun that swells in the dark. Cracks appear across the mountain, each one a thread of gold. The mountain breaks into pieces. The screen becomes a cloud of fire, ash, and rock.

After the video, we saw countless photos of the petrified people in Pompeii. It looked as though the city had just been ravaged by gorgons. There was nothing human left in them. The only things that assured me that these bodies of stone had been people and not simply the products of a sculptor with a chisel, were the expressions of extreme pain the faces still carried, and the positions certainty of death coiled them into.

When the time to ask questions arrived, we all raised our hands, and knew that every hand in the air was desperate for the same answer. The teacher picked one. “Could that happen to us? If El Popo exploded, would the same thing happen to us?” We all lowered our hands.

*

There were no volcanoes in this story. The sky was a black dragon. Fire and brimstone rained directly from God´s palms. There were cries— begging for mercy, for forgiveness. The city exploded. A wall of flames rose in the air.

It was a horrible scene, but I had already heard of Sodom and Gamorrah, so I didn't feel scared. But the moment I saw Lot's wife turn back and immediately become a statue, a cold sweat dripped down my temples. Seeing this woman become a pillar of salt, forced to stare at her destroyed home for eternity terrified me more than the footage of burning men ever could. 

When the film ended I asked the teacher why God had punished Lot´s wife. She responded the obvious: She looked back and she disobeyed God's will in doing so. But could God blame her? Everything she´d ever known was lost to fire. 

Someone else asked a question. What was Sodom's sin? They were sodomites. What's that? They were gay men.

*

Well, yes. It’s bound to happen one day. We don’t have to worry about that now because it is active and flowing. If it was clogged, then we should be scared. But yes, it’ll happen one day. If not in your generation, God forbid, it’ll be in the next.

*

One morning nearing the end of the war, a group of Iztaccihuatl´s suitors gathered to discuss Popocatépetl´s inevitable return. Once he came back, any chance at conquering the princess´ heart would vanish. They decided to spread the false news of the warrior´s demise, in order for them to court her. But they were unaware of the lovers´ promise to each other. When the rumor reached the princess´ ears, she ran into the woods and cried until she drowned herself in a puddle of her tears.

*

During recess, me and my friends sat under the oak in what we called “el patio de la luna” and ate our lunches. We couldn’t see El Popo from there, but we knew that wherever we went, whichever tree we hid under, it would always be looming over us. 

Alas, there was not much else to do other than to have fun with it. We started playing a game where each of us had to make the pose we would do when the toxic clouds came to petrify us forever. I forget exactly what kind of pose I did, but I remember Fernando stuck out his tongue and lifted his leg as though he were farting, which he did; Tamara held her hair up and inflated her cheeks; Fryda raised her arms and showed both her middle fingers, which felt so edgy and we all went woooaaooo. But the pose that felt very significant then, and still does, is when Marco called us losers, pulled down his pants and underwear, and exposed his penis while doing a superman pose. 

The girls said ew, put your pants down, and covered their eyes. All the boys roared in laughter. But I felt the most troubled I had ever been. I didn’t know how to react.  This was the first penis of a boy my age I had ever seen besides my own. I blushed redder than it is possible. I felt the ground open below me, and I caught myself falling headfirst into a pit of thick magma.

*

I dreamed of marrying him by the sea. I dreamed of him naked in the woods. I dreamed he was made of light and every morning he´d leak through my window to kiss me. I dreamed of us kissing almost every night. Every morning I prayed to forget. I dreamed of blue flames in Hell.

*

The man sat in the center of my aunt´s living room. We sat in a circle around him. He showed us his palms, the red holes in his palms. From the beginning I knew he was lying. But the priest told him to share his witness. He told us about meeting Jesus. One day, while he was in prayer, Jesus embraced him from the back and told him to spread his word, for millions of souls were descending to Hell. Jesus took him by the hand and led him through a tour of Hell. The ground was made of rotten flesh, his feet sank in it, and were covered in a black mucus. There was a chorus of screams and supplications. Jesus showed him the singers: murderers, thiefs, youths who had engaged in sexual intercourse, sodomites, liars—all trapped in the hot flesh like flies in wax.

I was horrified. I got up and ran to the kitchen. Abi, my grandmother, followed me. It's good that you left, she said, I didn't want to hear any more either, but I was ashamed of what the priest might think if I left. But how could he bring such a charlatàn here! I was happy that Abi thought he was a liar too, but later we discovered my aunt believed in the message of this prophet.

*

Popocatépetl returned victorious, but he found his people in mourning. They were fasting, the city was covered in orange flowers. It was not long before he discovered it was his beloved who had died.

*

When my faith was firm marble, I believed this to be the way of life: Follow God’s commandments or you shall burn for eternity. if I was good, El Popo would never explode.

*

For our seventh grade graduation, my class planned a week-long trip to Altikamp, a camping site located on the skirts of the Iztaccíhuatl. The staff there planned so many activities for us: mud sliding, mountain biking, hikes, archery, paintball battles, soccer tournaments, zip-lining across the woods and nightly, giant bonfires. But the most amazing experience Alitkamp had to offer was tree climbing. Many of my friends and classmates didn’t go because they had filled plastic water bottles with their parent’s vodka and had gotten so drunk that they couldn’t possibly get up from their beds. There was talk of them getting sent home, but in the end they were allowed to stay. 

When I found out that no one was being sent home, I felt a sting of regret for choosing not to drink with them. The whole hike towards the tree climbing site I kept thinking how much more fun that must’ve been than stupid tree climbing. But when we finally got to the platform I was glad I came. From there, we had the most incredible view of El Popo; it looked bigger than I’d ever seen it.It expanded larger than the entire sky. Millions of  pines shielded it like spares until they were replaced by the enormous walls of ice that rose near the peak.

To this day, this is the most beautiful view I’ve ever come across. We stared at it for a long time, taking in its greatness, and then got ready for climbing. We put on helmets and harnesses attached to long rubber ropes that were already secured at the top of the tree. We were taught how to knot the rope to cause friction, and how to lift ourselves by pulling the ropes towards our bodies. It was fairly easy, but it was also very physically demanding. 

In twenty minutes I was so high above the ground that the people below me became faceless. I could see them making gestures, and moving as though they were laughing but I couldn’t hear their voices. I was alone, suspended mid-air, and as I moved upwards I could hear El Popo roaring. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of it. In this place in between the ground and the sky, facing a colossus so beautiful and deadly, I felt as thin as a pine needle. I became  as small as a pebble, in the midst of an infinite universe where Titans still roam. In front of me sang the greatest one of them all. 

There, I felt closer to heaven than I ever had before. I remember thinking my mom was wrong; the volcano wasn’t proof that God exists, the volcano was God.

*

The warrior brought his beloved´s corpse back into the woods, and there he cried like he had seen no man cry before. Moved by his untamable pain, the gods came down and transformed them into two enormous, immortal bodies: her into a sleeping woman made of ice and rock, him into a peak full of all the world's madness and fire so that one day he could take revenge and destroy the world.

*

On the last night of camp, I cried because Marco and I were going to different schools next year and I wouldn’t see him as often as I used to. Even though I was very aware that I liked him, that I was in love with him, I never told him or tried to allude to it. This became so hard, especially at sleepovers when we slept side by side, or at swimming pool parties where we often showered together before going home. 

       Among my quiet tears, I heard his own weeping. I turned around and saw him sitting on the bed next to mine, his wet blue eyes staring at me. “I will miss you so much, Gerar,” he whispered. “Come,” I said because I couldn’t articulate anything else and I wanted to hold him. All the other boys around us snored as he slipped into my bed. I held him so close to me. We cried together. Our hands held each other so hard it felt like we were arm wrestling. There was a blade between our noses. We stared at each other for hours and hours, not saying a word, breathing, until ashy light began to paint his face and we understood that it was time to part—that neither of us had yet the courage to kiss the other.

*

Now that I am reflecting on how I thought that my God would destroy me for loving a boy, I wonder, what beautiful bodies would the ancient gods have transformed us into if they had seen us that night.

*

That year, summer had struck Texas so strong that in between drying dandelions the grass grew blue. We were on vacation. At this point in my life I was desperate to kiss a boy, and the heat and sloth intensified this urgency. Trying to find a burning romance, I downloaded the app Grindr on my phone. I said I was 18. I didn't upload any photos of me on my profile.

Love, I did not find. Instead, I learned a new lexicon: top, bottom, vers, bear, twink, otter, dom, sub, hosting; men threw these words at me accompanied by pictures of their genitals. I didn't know how to respond, this language might as well have been German. But I am a quick learner. If I confessed to being younger than what my profile said, some men instantly blocked me. Others said come over. But I never did. I was deadly curious, but also deadly afraid of sex—of gay sex. My parents once told me of old classmates who had died of AIDS.

*

One day at the pool, my cousins Jenny and Peque were looking at this golden haired boy and kept commenting on how gorgeous he was and that we should hang out with him. I, too, thought this boy was so handsome and would do anything for him to be my first kiss, but of course I didn’t say anything. 

My cousins decided to go talk to him, and I, who at that point was better at English than either of them, would be their wingman. We approached and started a conversation. His name was Sonny, like the technology brand. He was our age. I don’t remember what we talked about but I remember thinking he was boring. His pink lips and the golden tan on his shoulders kept him interesting to me. At some point, we all decided to get out of the pool and play a game. The game was filling styrofoam cups with ice cubes and throwing them at each other, and if someone got you, you were automatically eliminated. We could hide and run anywhere but we couldn’t go past the golf practice, which was fairly far from the pool. Sonny suggested we played in teams: boys vs. girls. My cousins didn’t like this idea but I said we could switch the teams up for the second round. And so the game began. 

Sonny and I ran with our cups of ice behind some bushes and not a minute had passed before we were making out. My heart exploded with excitement, and a hot relief spread across my arms and legs. I couldn’t understand how I had known he wanted to kiss me, or how he had known that I wanted that too. We hadn’t said anything about it. It was like we had telepathically plotted it the moment we introduced ourselves. His hair smelled like dirt and water. We kissed for about three minutes, kneeling under a bush, and then, afraid to get caught, we went out and resumed the game.

We never got the chance to kiss again although I was dying to and I could feel him aching for it too. We found Jenny and Peque and started throwing ice at them. When the game ended he told us this had reminded him of a game he used to play with his friends in New York, where he lived with his mom. “Do you like New York?” “Yes it’s fun, but it snows a lot in the winter and I hate snow.”

*

Mamá once told me that the day in the year the most people go to church is Ash Wednesday. More than Christmas, more than Easter. I’m not sure if this is statistically true, but I do remember driving past Nuestra Señora del Camino on Ash Wednesday once and seeing a line to receive the cross of burnt palms go outside the church and turn the corner. 

I wonder if in other places Ash Wednesday is just as frequented as it is in Puebla. Or if perhaps, for mere geographical reasons, us Poblanos have a much deeper understanding of the dictum “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

*

In the middle of English class, notice came that due to the immense amount of volcanic ash falling, we were to be sent home. The ashfall felt godsent. It meant I could go to Rodrigo’s house to drink rum and smoke cigarettes in his living room. 

Rodrigo was a lonely boy. His parents were divorced— his mom lived in Mexico City so he lived in his dad’s house. His dad spent so much time working, traveling and at his girlfriend’s place that he really only saw Jorge two or three days a week whenever he went back to the house to shower or to wash his clothes. I’m not really sure how Jorge spent his free time; he said he didn’t like reading, but he talked in such a poetic way it’d make more sense if he did. But he did fail nine out of the ten classes he took sophomore year so he probably wasn’t lying. 

He often came to my house to eat after school, hang out and study because being in his house depressed him. However, because of the lack of adults, we always went to his house to drink, watch movies my parents wouldn’t like, and throw parties. That day, we drove with Sebas to Rodrigo’s house, and emptied a new bottle of his dad’s Blue Label as soon as we got there. We laughed all day. A graveyard of cigarettes built itself on the parquet. We sang every Luis Miguel song on YouTube karaoke, and we watched an episode of the Mexican hit show Club de Cuervos, in which the main character, Chava, goes to Acapulco and does so many drugs he blacks out and wakes up in a tent full of naked men.

Then, needing fresh air, despite the ashes, we went up to his roof to smoke. At that point of the day, the sky wasn’t gray anymore. The sun was setting, and we had a perfect view of the volcanoes: two orange shadows fading into the pink haze of twilight. We sat and then realized ashes would stick to our butts and ruin our pants, but we were so drunk we just laughed. Sebas and Rodrigo started talking about things I could only feign interest in: their favorite sports cars (Bugatti Chiron, Pagani Huayra), the Champions League, how our friend Rodrigo liked to pretend he had more money than he did.     

Then we talked about the episode we’d watched earlier that day. Was Chava “puto”? What the fuck was that? It was so weird. Taking drags from Jorge’s cigarettes, we talked about how “maricones” are disgusting and that if one of our friends ever came out as gay we’d stop hanging out with them. Eventually, we changed the subject to which girls we’d like to lose our virginities to. I said Sofia T.  Sí wey, está buenísima.

*

The night after I lost my virginity, El Popo erupted with a force that made the earth shake. It happened during the spring break of my senior year of highschool. I brought a boy I had been hooking up with for months in boarding school to stay with me and I told everyone he was my best friend. No one was fooled, but no one dared question it. My parents did ask me if he was gay and when I said no they said they just thought it was funny how different he was from my friends from home (meaning he was a ballet dancer).

His name was Paul. I wasn’t in love with him, but back then I would’ve told anyone that I’d die for him. Every day, we got dinner together after class and then we’d go to his room (because he had Christmas lights and I didn’t) to do whatever we could in the fifteen minutes I was allowed to be in there with him, with the door open. When his hall coordinator came to tell us our time was up, I would just get my stuff and go hang out with my friends. Still, I would go to every single one of his rehearsals, and at night I would write odes to him where he was the prince and I the swan dying in his arms. But the truth is we didn’t ever talk much. I knew next to nothing about his life and he knew absolutely nothing about mine. I don’t think we cared much either.

The thirst Sonny had assuaged that summer in Texas had quickly returned after, and it had grown without mercy over years and years of hiding and yearning. So the moment Paul offered his lips to me, in the basement of his dorm, sitting on a piano, I felt as though all my life had led to that moment. Then, it became routine. But this routine was a bliss I had never been allowed to experience. I wanted it to last. It seemed like such an essential part of life which I’d been deprived of.

The first night Paul stayed at my house was also the first night we’d ever had the luxury of a shut door and the hours that expand like eons behind it. The moment the lights went off, darkness merged our bodies together and we became indivisible. We had sex. I couldn’t tell if I liked it, but I could tell it had awakened one of the most intense emotions I had ever felt, like ice igniting in me, melted wax covering my body. When Jonathan fell asleep, I cried all night into my pillow, not really knowing why. I had no reason to, but my body erupted into sobs, as though it needed to grieve my innocence.

The following night, we were eating quesadillas in the kitchen when suddenly we felt as though my house were slanting back and forth into the street, and a window close to me shattered. The chaos stopped in only about five to ten seconds, but it was strong enough to cause a big fright. Papá came into the kitchen and instantly turned on the news. It took the reporter about five minutes before he finally talked about what had happened: The Popocatépetl had the largest eruption it had had in over a decade, which caused a short but strong earthquake. Damage was minimal except in villages surrounding the volcano. 

We then went up to the roof to see if we could see anything. Amidst the starless night and distance, glowed a bright red circle surrounded by a yellow aura. An unaware eye could’ve mistaken it for a solitary plane flying in the dark, though it looked larger and more sinister than anything man made. It reminded me of that famous nebula: God’s Eye.

*

That night, with my head on Paul’s chest, I saw Sodom burning, Lot´s wife, the people of Pompeii. They gathered around me, more real, more threatening than they ever had been.

*

Three weeks after I started college, we were sent home because of the fast spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. I couldn’t go home because of international travel restrictions and because my visa required me to stay in the United States for at least four months, so I went to stay in Texas, where my oldest cousin would also be living during that time. At first I thought it was for the best— in Puebla, I wouldn’t be able to leave my house at all and I thought I would get depressed. In Texas, I would have more freedom, and I would be living with Gerardo, whom I was close with at the time.

After months of seeing no one but my cousin and my parents' faces on FaceTime, I felt so isolated and I decided to go on Tinder. There, I met a boy named Jacob who was also kind of boring but that I started dating for reasons not too different from the ones I dated Jonathan. We mainly went on long drives and listened to music and then we would have sex in his car. I wouldn’t say this was an important relationship in my life were it not for the fact that one time, while we made out in the tennis courts, Gerardo happened to be there, and saw.

In the summer, my family flew to Texas to see me, and although it was so exciting to be reunited, their visit was tainted with an invisible concrete wall that stood between us. At first, I couldn’t tell what it was. I thought perhaps the distance had corrupted our bond and made Mamá and my siblings feel unreachable. But one day at the pool, Mamá held me in her arms as though I were still her baby, and she told me that Gerardo had seen me kissing a boy. She caressed my wet hair as she spoke. The sun and the pool’s chlorine blinded me, and the thousand objections that I wanted so desperately to say, clogged in my throat and refused to come out. 

Mamá said she loved me, that she couldn’t not love me no matter what I did. And although her words had good intentions, I felt as though she were a mother talking to her son who had just committed murder. 

*

I screamed the heart out of my chest. Then the liver, the stomach, both intestines, the lungs, every vocal cord poured out from the crater of my mouth. Empty, I watched these invisible organs spread across my bed. They had been part of me. They were snatched, exposed to daylight to rot. I was left a living cadaver that couldn’t live because living went against its nature. Where can I bury this former self, this self that has been crushed out of me? Do I dare bury it?

*

Mamá and Papá were fine about it. It could’ve been better, but they didn’t kick me out or send me to conversion therapy like I always thought they would. The fact that they didn’t was almost disappointing; my whole life was lived in fear of this, and when nothing happened, I felt the weight of the waste I had made my life into. 

I was grateful, though. The moment I confirmed it by saying “You are right. That did happen,” I was overcome with catharsis. I’ve never said “I am gay” to them though, it is only ever implied. They now ask me if I have boyfriends, but I say no even if I do. It feels impossible to make this self that stayed private for so long the self I show publicly to them.

And it is a futile task to do this with my extended family. The first time I returned to Puebla from college and I went to grandma’s house to eat, everyone stared at me like my parents had brought back a golden monkey for a son. When I kissed my aunts on the cheek, I was met with reluctance, as if they didn’t know where my lips had been. When I tried talking to my cousins, (the same cousins I had grown up with as if we were siblings, whom I’d grieved the death of our grandfather with, whom I had played with every day of childhood and slept in the same beds with several times) their words were cold and sharp as scissors. Gerardo had told them all, and after they'd heard his story, I had become a stranger. And perhaps I was. They had heard of a side of me that I’d never shown them, that seemed to be against everything I stood for, that wasn’t who I had let them believe I was. 

None of them said anything about it. I didn’t say anything about it. I smiled, I ate the artichoke soup, I laughed when my uncle cracked a joke. Even my laughter provoked silence. I stayed on that table for five hours, immobile, until mom got up and said it was time to go home. I still didn’t move. She had to call me again and again before I understood.

*

It was so easy to become a pillar of salt. I didn’t need brimstone nor a toxic cloud. El Popo never exploded, but my home was destroyed.  It was God with his ruling fist that did the damage. I keep looking at the past. I can’t look away from it, it looks so beautiful and remote, flames flying in the distance. It doesn’t feel like it was me who lived it. It doesn’t make sense that I could lose so much without catastrophe. I think of my first communion party, climbing trees, putting on plays on Christmas, the time I saw Jenny kiss a boy by the creek. I often surrender and pray to the same God that petrified me. Every time, I beg him to let me face away from the embers.