We are reading the morning paper and sipping coffee out of white porcelain mugs. Steam swirls into the air, I can hear my own heartbeat. In another lifetime I was the newspaper, and you were the mug. But in this lifetime we inhabit our human bodies, mine sitting across from yours at the kitchen table, all thumbs and anxiety. A headline bellows 

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“A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN WHILE A FOREST FIRE RUNS THROUGH LOS ANGELES” 

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I tell you about my dream of reincarnating into a Giant Sequoia, the largest tree species in the world. Native to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, they can grow to be 300 feet tall. I have always felt deeply connected to these creatures who are tethered to the Earth but simultaneously sprawl halfway to Heaven. And paradoxical to their flammable existence, these gentle giants are also pyromaniacs; though scientists prefer the word serotinous. 

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The cones of the Giant Sequoia are serotinous; their seeds are kept inside, like skeletons in a closet, until triggered by an environmental cue to release them. During a forest fire the extreme heat causes the cones to dry out, open up, and share their esoteric seeds. They freefall from the tops of the trees down to the forest floor like kamikaze pilots. In their final moments before being buried underneath the soil, they whisper all of their secrets, suicide letters. Thousands of soft voices, divinely carried through the wind. 

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If you were to confess all of your sins with no one around to hear, would it make any sound? 

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The young sequoias bear witness as the needles of their elder’s are not only consumed but devoured by flame, killing the treetop canopy. When the fire has ceased, sunlight will spill into every corner of the forest. The saplings will flinch at its touch, they have never known warmth without violence. Forever burdened by the weight of being burned, they turn towards the sun anyway. Patiently awaiting their trial by fire.

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You ask me what it feels like to set flames to everything I have ever loved. I confess that my mother hid the matchbooks from me when I was a child. I tell you about how in the eighth grade I learned that matter cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed into something new; and about how I haven’t known peace since. How at twelve years old I ruminated over my own death and decomposition. That I have always felt like a gravesite, and like the flowers left lying nearby. 

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I am tethered to Earth, I am halfway to Heaven, I am a paradox, I am the skeleton in the closet, I am secrets, I am suicide letters, I am sin

I am flinching at your touch, I am letting the light in 

I am growing skin as tough as tree bark 

I am a young sequoia, breathing in smoke since birth 

What does it mean to create, to become, if not setting yourself on fire over and over again?