Published by Coffee People, 2021

Nestled in the crook of Gillette, Wyoming, where the West begins: coal-fired breath exhales from the steel lungs of coal mines towering amid fields of amber wheat grass and crab apple orchards. Citizens survive within the cold womb of the Powder River Basin, gorging on economic booms, hotdog feeds, firework shows, graduations, and the annual strawberry shortcake festival, nourished on the wellbeing of the mines, the Mother of Gillette. We rely on the steady flow of coal to nurture the delicate function of the city, arduously laboring to maintain the roaring fires burn, burn, burning from inside the Mother’s belly. I think that my mother loves me like a boom town—apocalyptic and contingent on battered hands, sore needs, and jaded spirits. But she loves me, nonetheless. Her love doesn’t rely on me to stoke the coals and keep her proud; it surges and plummets, depended on arbitrary matters. Like the children of Gillette, I celebrate each boom—it’s inevitable that Mothers will always bust again.