Thank you, Yonatan! I did, and I appreciate the opportunity to share — I left my writing community back in my old life in Maryland.

I went on a mapping survey to Crisfield, MD while in Montgomery College’s GIS Certificate program. We went on a pro bono survey to provide them a building inventory data set. The Union of Concerned Scientists predicts the city will be completely engulfed by the rising bay in less than 30 years, but they had nothing of the sort to assist their response efforts.

We took a day trip to Tangier Island afterward, the setting of the poem. It was after they made news for Pres. Trump visiting and promising to save the island from sea level rise, much to their adoring adulation.

My friend Sophia was the one in the poem, and she told me about her Quaker upbringing. It was a framework to give me hope and purpose, upon seeing first-hand just how deep a denial people can have toward the changing climate.

It made me happy to send that poem earlier —I decided to revisit the daily journal I wrote the original draft, and scrawled below the last line I wrote in the margins “I think it’s time I to go to grad school.”

I forgot that was the moment I decided to start school again, and it made my never-ending homework pile seem less awful.