All last winter, I was like a lonely cowboy waiting for the saloon to open.

All last winter, I was like a lonely cowboy waiting for the clouds to sing me a lullaby, for the horses to sleep in the Grand Canyon, waiting for the mountains to glow with smoky spring miles. I was a lonely highway cowboy with a heart of sunshine paper. I sat around my newspaper fire, finding only enough light to keep me warm. Blues drifted in and out of my dreamy ears.

There was a song I sang to summon my angels who never tired—only this too has faded. I go up like a leafy projection from the changing trees, into the sky.

Strange, how I fancied myself a cowboy with a with a herd of notebooks. Me, just a shrinking teenage girl, with no hand to hold, no baby to rock, no halls to walk, just a pen as a whip, only it kept decaying and fading as fast as my notebooks would allow. My words faded until I was pure spirit, shining and swaying to the music coming through my cheap headphones.

It was the winter of 2021, and people were dying hard and fast, only instead of bringing humanity into focus, it blinded our eyes and stuffed our ears. There were still freakish dreamers who denied that any dying had happened, but they were so delusional that I could hardly stand to be around them. People fought over oxygen, beds, food, fire, paper. There was nothing immune from fights—not birth or death.

Death. It is everywhere, squeezing the tears from my selfish heart like juice from a shriveled orange. How can such things be in the world?

How did this mother on the news find out that her nine-year-old girl had died? Did she scream or just run for the telephone? Little eyes closed never to open, little lungs closed never to inhale again. What are her siblings doing? What are her classmates doing? Her family is shattered. Death is the last thing this little girl thought about when she said she wasn’t feeling well. The most horrible thought is little shoes waiting under a little girl bed, never to be worn again, dolls and stuffed animals staring into space. She was no angel. Just a kid. Not a future president or world-shaker, just a kid.

When your train whistle blows, get your ticket and luggage ready. If tears are a waterfall, then I’m going over. I wish the theological answer people would just shut up and cry for a minute. But my eyes are like cold rolling pins.

When people’s trains come, they leave. So take care of one another’s black regrets and yellow tears. Try a little harder. Be kind. It’s one of the few things that ever actually matters.

Look around at your footprints. Look around at yourself. Above yourself.