'Me' problem

Salt Lake City, Utah: 7/20

"Sounds like the weather is a 'you' problem," Mom says, and I laugh. 📞

"I keep bringing the worst with me everywhere I go! Anyhow, gotta go buy dinner now. Love you."

I get in my car and see that the foothills are newly on fire. I stifle a sardonic laugh. Please tell me this is not also a 'me' problem.

I drive as close as I can to the blaze, and pull over. Following me is a couple walking up the street and a stream of cars with the same idea.

"Why are we like this?" I ask the couple. "Why seek out danger?"

"It's fun, isn't it?" The girlfriend says, sweating through her shirt in this unbearable heat wave that started the day I drove into town.

The fire reminds me of you, who I should be with but haven't touched in over a month. I left you on page 331, dripping in rainwater, a smile on your face, a gun pointed at your chest. You'd never ask why I headed towards the flames. You'd find a way to harness them.

I miss all of the characters I've neglected. Half formed like Frankenstein's monsters, scattered among my pages, unfinished, begging to be completed or killed, anything but this deformed half-life I've burdened them with.

I'm so sorry. I'm so stuck. I don't know how to fix Lily's missing arm, the transparent skin on Oliver so thin you can see his organs. And Erika's like a creepy bog monster, just looking at her gives me chills, can she even be salvaged?

"No wonder though. It's been so dry this summer," the boyfriend remarks as we watch helicopters carry giant buckets of water over the drought-ridden grass. Don't worry, I think. It'll start raining the day I leave. No really, I checked the forecast. It truly is a 'me' problem.

Who was I to think I could write a book? Who I was I to think I could do these characters justice. To create life. Other authors are God, I'm just a very smart monkey with a keyboard. Mish mash mish mash, throw some eye of newt in here, a drop of nuclear waste there, oh no what have I done?!

It's alive, but it shouldn't be.

"I can see the flames!" The girlfriend says. A new man walks up, and the four of us group together, mesmerized in the smoke, watching the world around us burn.

I imagine you here with me, the only character who feels complete, the only one who would seek out the fire too. You'd know that it being a 'you' problem means it's also a 'you' solution. You would find a way to harness the flames.

So, pookie has thin skin, you say into my ear as you lean your forearm on my shoulder. Doesn't that add to the theme? And Erika is a bog monster, but she's a sexy bog monster. The filth and mess, maybe it even makes her more alluring. And Lilith missing an arm is kind of the whole point. If she started the book with both arms, there'd be nowhere to progress. He smirks and his dark eyes glitter.

I smile back. Okay. Me problems means Me solutions. I got this!

"The fire is going down," new guy says. He's right. We nod but hesitate to say goodbye. There's something intimate about this moment, about the four us sweating on the hot pavement in the danger zone between the sirens and the silence. No one wants to break it.

I look at my three unlikely IRL companions. The couple have cheap southern accents and cheaper ragged clothes. The fourth man is struggling with baldness. I bring horrible weather with me wherever I go. Yet we still want to be around each other. I suppose maybe everyone is half-formed. Maybe God is just mish mashing on a keyboard, laughing at whatever he comes up with.

And maybe that's kind of the whole point.

PS: Dinner was soft-serve ice cream, bc maybe that's kind of the whole point, too.