A milky, cryptocrystalline chrysalis is precipitating beneath the root: magnesite.
From an intercontinental distance, I now watch them burn. I do not watch the videos or news reports. Instead, I log on to the glitchy government incident map that lags as it loads the sawtooth, matte pink perimeters that represent the live edges of wildfire. They lie, translucent and superimposed, above the shaded topographical rendering of the surface geography of a state. The names of highways and towns are still legible beneath its pink obliteration. Cool mint green represents the forests. Subterranean mineral stratigraphies are omitted from this dimension. I refresh the page every so often to catch the flat shape approaching the regions where my loved ones live. I superimpose its odorless and dissociated form onto my mental map of this land that, though at a great remove, shaped my being. My loved ones include the trees. I have only the capacity to digest this zoomed out, two-dimensional iconography of live catastrophe that omits all affect, texture, and consequence.