NELLE 7 | 2024
Until then, Where are you? What is your address?
I am hurting. I am riding the night
on a full tank of gas and my headlights
are reaching out for something.
—Natalie Diaz, “If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert”
You drive the mountain road toward Taos to reunite with Jo after ten years, to be her student again for just one day at a writing workshop on second-person narration. It’s close, you tell yourself, only ninety minutes from your small town. It means nothing, you tell yourself, trying to stymie your hopes, to suppress the giddy thrum in your stomach. You wonder what you still have in common, besides the memory of her writing seminars a decade ago, where you sat nearest the head of the table, where you stumbled over your words because she was listening, where you reveled in walking with her after class across the library quad, continuing the discussions that three hours could never quite contain. You’ve missed her voice, low and hypnotic, the way she chose the perfect words effortlessly.
It’s the first time you’ve done this winding drive since wildfires ravaged northern New Mexico two months ago. Above, in the mountains, swaths of pine and juniper are scarred brown, the forest needle-beds blackened, unable to drink the abundance of late-summer rains. Now, floods have descended. In the small towns you pass through, sandbags line the sidewalks and water spills down the streets, seeking level ground. The picnic areas and campsites of Carson National Forest are blocked with caution tape and barricades, signs warning of falling trees and residual embers.
You walk from your hotel to Jo’s workshop to find her arriving at the same time, from the opposite direction. You’d recognize her from afar, anywhere: her tall, lithe stature, confident shoulders, long brown hair that turns amber in slanted sunlight. The caramel-colored blazer she wears is one you remember from when she taught back in Missouri. She sees you, too, must know you from your athletic gait and the giant handbag you’ve carried for years, though your hair has been cut from flowing curls to a close-cropped pixie. She gives you a hug and, pulling back as if to assess you, compliments your hair; you relish the momentary thrill of her approval. She holds the door then leads you through the sun-saturated bookstore to a small classroom, where you wait for the other attendees. Today, you sit at the back of the table, not begging attention. You have, in the past ten years, learned a practiced nonchalance that betrays no hint of desire.
During this class, you debate the way that “you” works—the difference between writing about yourself in the second person and writing a missive to someone else. You enjoy this literary discourse for old times’ sake, even if it signals a rift in your sensibilities. Her voice, rife with comfort, has not changed. Then, without warning, the sky turns from sunny to gray, and through an open door in the classroom, you hear the rumble of thunder, the susurrus of afternoon monsoons falling upon this mountain town. The air dampens. Mist wrinkles the papers blanketing the table. The mid-Missouri storms you remember seem to have followed you both to the high desert, an attempt at reminding you of something you once shared.
By evening, after the workshop and Jo’s public reading, the bookstore is dense with people, post-rain humidity, and hot, bright lights. Jo confides in you that she feels woozy—maybe from the margarita at dinner, maybe the stuffy room, maybe the crowd or the altitude. You wither in this moment of trust, in what feels like a gift. You ask whether she’d like to go outside, get some air, and the two of you, in a movement that feels surreptitious, clandestine, exit through a side door. You feel a certain protectiveness, a desire to secret her away.