Flying Closer to The Sun

An illustrated essay

We were flying too close to the sun. So the dust lies everywhere, on everything, and I can never quite get the dirt out from under my fingernails.

I think back and can’t quite believe that we ever got anything done in the heat, when not even the dogs bothered to move from their shaded asylums and flies didn’t have the energy to be inconvenient. Fires spread quickly in summer, but there doesn’t seem to be much to burn. They evacuated everything not long before I arrived and it is only just beginning to get back to normal; flames have licked the sides of the mountain black and people have lost things, real things.