By Reese Bentzinger
Content Warning: “Lahaina is in Ashes” focuses on the tragedies of the 2023 Maui wildfires.
and you’re watching the smoke sputter in your firepit, poking logs until they crumble to bits. Your blanket is cozy enough, but you want to be somewhere warm again. You yearn to make love on a bed of white sand, to trace your fingers through the grains, to gaze at starlight. Your stars have been taken over by streetlamps and smog transforms the sunniest days into night. At night, the bartender who served you tequila sunrises screams for his wife. His hands cut to ribbons as they rip through the rubble, searching for the shimmer of her wedding ring, a glimmer of light to pierce through the dark. In the dark, your hands fumble as you search for a bottle of CBD syrup. You tear through your medicine cabinet, leaving capless prescriptions in your wake. You shouldn’t have taken out your contacts so soon. How can you sleep without it? Too numb to find sleep, a college freshman sits on the floor of a makeshift hospital. She watches the fire consume the home that belonged to her parents, and to her grandfather before them. Ten hours ago, she was lying under the fairy lights her Dad helped secure to her bedroom wall. Now there is nothing left, not even home insurance. Your real estate agent assures you that the sale will be a success, citing your home’s proximity to a good school district. You know she’s right, there’s nothing more valuable than a property with a renovated kitchen in a safe neighborhood. You’re confident it’ll be swept up in days. Within days, bulldozers turn the corpse of a neighborhood into a birthing bed for a resort. A monstrous child, spewing plastic water bottles that fester in the sun. They curl and harden until they transform into the cones and cowries that were taken by tourists. You sunbathe in a gold seashell necklace, a little piece of Hawai’i you took home with you. You look out at the still water of your pool, feeling a twinge of sadness when you realize how much you’ll miss it. But you know that ocean water is crystal blue and has enough room for you to conquer the waves on your surfboard. Your surf instructor paddles away from the shore, heading towards his neighbors circled in the water. Without breaking their songs of mourning they let him in, their bodies bobbing with the current. Wordlessly, he tosses flowers for his brothers and mother in the circle so that they can join in their communion. He looks towards the land, beyond the green palms and vibrant lilies. When he tries to sing, his throat clamps up, as though weighed down by the smoke tourists don’t breathe.
Lahaina is in ashes, and you’re doing just fine.
The Automaton
One of my hands is shaped to perfectly fit the handle of a suitcase. The other holds an iron, steaming out the wrinkles of tedium and small talk. It’s boiling outside, isn’t it?, I’m asked over and over. Maybe that’s it. The gas coming from daily traffic jams is overcooking my circuitry. In a new place, my programming tells me, I will become fully machine. My life will slide into dresser drawers instead of packing cubes. But that human urge, fueled by vodka and boredom, propels me forward into a stranger’s arms. When he dances with me, he pulls me close and whispers that no two days will be the same. And so I settle on his couch for a couple of years, finding something new every time I look at the skyline outside his window. Each sunrise reveals a different shade of purple, and I introduce myself to the unknown shadows that creep across his floor. But when I can trace the freckles on his back, the cracks outside my apartment, into a familiar river, I must seek the excitement of unfamiliarity. We’re strange creatures, we automatons. Not knowing why we do what we do, only that our circuitry compels us to do it. My human heart yearns for connection, I tell him. But my machinery, the gears in my ankles and the cogs in my head, spring into action at the sound of a train whistle.
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Reese Bentzinger is a poet living in St. Louis, Missouri. She can be found on Instagram @reese_b_