The day began in the inanity of ritual, coffee grounds steeped in the French press, warm toast, and eggs sizzling softly in the pan. The ordinary American breakfast, full of nostalgia and nourishment. The news hummed in the background. A foreign tragedy. A flattened town. Rubble and children’s cries. It felt like it could have been the town next to ours.
Maybe it was.
Outside, the dry grass shimmered in the heat, echoing the same thirst, the same hunger, for water, for peace, for something beyond survival. Two worlds, one here, one there, coexisting. Like parallel universes. One sipping morning coffee, the other sifting through ashes. Calmness and tragedy. Siblings of the same day. Estranged, and yet, bound by blood neither can quite recognize.
Should we not see this connection? Or would it hurt too much to acknowledge it? Is it easier to pretend the smoke on our horizon is just local, just ours?
Then came the sonic boom. A tremor in the air. A plume of smoke rising, sudden and uninvited. Space and time collided. The fire wasn’t far anymore. It was here. In our backyard. What once felt distant now teleported into our lives with terrifying immediacy.
My heart raced. And yet, I was calm. Not because I wasn’t afraid, but because fear arrived like a prophecy, not a surprise. In the haze of smoke and uncertainty, I saw it, not just the wildfire licking the edge of our home, but images of scorched Earth elsewhere. Flashes of starvation. Crying mothers. Empty hands. Both here and there, blood boiled and adrenaline surged. But survival demanded more than instinct. It demanded recognition.
Action, not pity.
Not just water for our grass, but justice for theirs.
To act would require a blood oath, not of violence, but of understanding. A soulful commitment to a truth we try to forget: we share a common DNA. No fire is ever truly foreign. Suffering is not bound by borders.
As the sun cast long shadows across our land, I watched the flames retreat, the smoke clear. The Earth beneath our feet turned red, dust, soot, blood, all the same color. I thought of the Red Sea. I thought of partings and crossings. I thought of how the world could split wide open and still be one whole.
The fire did not win. But neither did we. Not unless we remember.
In that moment, I knew; a distant struggle is never distant. And when we choose to see each other, as familiar, as mirrors, we become something more than survivors.
We become bound within the same heavenly light.