By Laura Vrcek

Today we were supposed to plant the potatoes, the Romanesco, the rainbow chard. Food that resists California winter frost. But instead we follow the instructions for our dust masks, purchase canned tuna for the fire victims when prompted by a donation ad.

Our friends flee to clear air east and south, but we stay. You even play golf. We find our dog in the neighbor’s backyard barking at his chickens. The chickens shudder in their cages. Our dog dominates, the heat of his white-fur chest heaving with curious rage.

A crow kicks a stick off the top of an electrical pole and it slams to the ground like a river stone. He follows us down the block, our neighborhood scarce of cars, anything that can breathe quarantined indoors. It’s just us and the animals, rejecting one another.

We argue about whose turn it is to make dinner. We both wish for rain, text photos of the smoke disguised as fog to family members on the East Coast. They forsake me for leaving them, for what? For this slate gray sky and fumes? It’s not always like this, I tell them. Usually, the crows pay no attention to us, whack away at the grandfather sycamore tree like they own the place. Today, they warn us, tell us to leave too.

Laura Vrcek has an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. She mostly writes nonfiction essays and prose poetry about triumphant family love. Her work has appeared in Apple Valley Review, Brevity's Nonfiction Blog, Entropy Magazine, The Red Clay Review, sPARKLE & bLINK, and KQED public radio’s broadcast segment Perspectives.