Burnt Sage & Blunt Truths

Somewhere between “In Transit” and “Good Luck” There is a special kind of modern frustration that comes from watching a piece of mail disappear while your tracking number continues to insist that everything is perfectly normal. You know the routine. You hand something to the United States Postal Service. It gets a tracking number. You watch it move. Then it arrives in Memphis. And apparently, Memphis is where time and mail go to die. I personally know someone who waited 34 days for a certified letter with tracking to reach its destination. Thirty-four. Days. A certified letter is not supposed to require an archaeological expedition. And yet here we are. Now, before somebody starts screaming that one person's experience doesn't prove the entire Memphis postal system is broken, you're right. It doesn't. And I have receipts for hundreds of people who have experienced the same exact thing.  But it does raise an interesting question when that experience exists alongside year...

  Sleepless in Monette It is 5:15 in the morning in Monette, Arkansas. The house is quiet—or as quiet as a house containing four cats, several humans, and enough collective irritation to power a small municipality can reasonably be expected to be. Everyone else is asleep. Sensible people are asleep. Even the sun has declined to participate in this nonsense. And then there is me. I am awake, staring into the predawn darkness while my brain conducts another emergency meeting that absolutely could have been an email. Did the check ever exist? Was it actually mailed? Where is the money? How many bills are waiting patiently—or not so patiently—for funds I was assured were already “in the mail”? At this point, “the check is in the mail” has joined “I’ll call you back in ten minutes” and “someone will get back to you shortly” in the Museum of Things People Say When They Want You to Stop Asking Questions. Admission is free. The gift shop accepts imaginary checks. I have been in Arkansas fo...

 I do not like this. I really, truly do not like this. I have been stuck in this house for nearly three weeks with limited money, no transportation freedom, and no meaningful relief from the grinding sameness of it all. I have watched Netflix until even Netflix seems concerned about me. I have made lists of things I cannot buy, places I cannot go, and plans I cannot put into motion. I have attempted to keep four cats from staging a furry reenactment of the fall of Rome. I have rearranged thoughts, counted days, stretched supplies, and tried to construct meal plans from whatever happens to be in the kitchen. Not What would I like to eat? Not What sounds good tonight? But What do we have, and how many meals can I force it to become? There is an enormous difference between those questions. At first, I thought I was simply bored. Then I realized boredom was the least of it. This is what happens when choice disappears. When you cannot get in the car and go somewhere because go...

I want a three-bedroom, three-bathroom house on an acre. That seems like a reasonable request. Three bedrooms for living, writing, and storing whatever the cats have decided belongs to them. Three bathrooms so nobody has to negotiate with Dakota through a closed door. An acre so I can step outside without learning the neighbor’s preferred brand of coffee through their kitchen window. In Arkansas, this is a house search. In Seattle, this is apparently a request to be adopted by a tech billionaire. As of August 2026, the median home sale price in Jonesboro was about $235,000 . In Seattle, it was about $874,000 . That’s roughly 3.7 times as much for the median home, before I’ve even had the audacity to ask for an acre. Those are citywide medians, not prices for identical houses. An acre in Seattle makes the comparison even more absurd. For a more relevant Arkansas example, a Jonesboro property listing describes a three-bedroom, three-bathroom house of more than 3,100 square feet on one ...

 I can overlook ugly carpet. I can paint over walls the color of old mustard. I can even live with a kitchen designed by someone who apparently hated both cooking and human movement. But if I pull up to a house and the neighbors are flying MAGA flags, I’m going to keep driving. People will say, “It’s just a flag.”  So were the Nazi flags, if you believe that logic. That is what flags are for. They tell you what someone wants you to know about them. A garden gnome tells me you enjoy whimsy. An Auburn football flag tells me you make questionable decisions on Sundays. A MAGA flag tells me something I would rather learn before signing a thirty-year mortgage. I’m not asking every neighbor to agree with me. I’ve lived among people with different politics all my life. We can disagree about taxes, road repairs, and whether the town needs another Dollar General. We can wave across the fence and complain together when the trash pickup is late. But I’m buying more than a roof and a patc...

There is something profoundly strange about opening my eyes and realizing I am no longer in the Pacific Northwest. Or, as I have called it more than once, the Pacific Northwets. I no longer wake beneath that soft gray ceiling that hangs over western Washington. There are no evergreens outside my window standing dark and watchful in the mist. No cool marine air sneaking through the cracks. No mountains lingering on the horizon, appearing only when the clouds decide we have earned the privilege of seeing them. Instead, I wake up in Arkansas. Arkansas, where the air has weight. Arkansas, where September apparently did not receive the memo that summer is supposed to be packing its bags. Arkansas, where the heat does not merely surround you—it climbs into your bra, sits down, and makes itself comfortable. And every morning, for the first few seconds after I wake up, my mind has not caught up with my body. I am still in Everett. I am still in the apartment where hummingbirds visited the balc...

I have arrived. Not gracefully. Not quietly. And certainly not with one of those perfectly curated photographs where I’m standing beside a “Welcome to Arkansas” sign with good hair, a clean car, and a caption about exciting new beginnings. I arrived tired. With pneumonia. Bone-deep, soul-deep, don’t-ask-me-to-make-another-decision tired. I arrived with boxes, cats, Mom, Dakota, receipts, road grime, stories I’m not quite ready to tell, and the lingering suspicion that somewhere between Washington and Arkansas I personally offended at least three gods of travel. But I arrived. And those may be the two most important words I have written in a very long time. I arrived. Leaving Wasn't the Hard Part People like to romanticize leaving. They talk about closing doors, starting new chapters, following your heart, and taking leaps of faith. That shit looks fantastic embroidered on a throw pillow. Actual leaving is uglier. Sometimes leaving means looking around at a life you w...