A story about foraged flowers.

The only sound is the snickering of candles we’ve arranged on the edge of the sink and the closed toilet seat, their flames flickering gold on our forehead sweat. Is the occasional swoosh of the shallow water that we swirl with our bath-puckered hands, just to sense movement. Is the steady tide of lungs, inhaling and exhaling the thick steam and incense smoke. It’s as if we’re cocooned in this small apartment bathroom and in the smooth edges of its bathtub, smaller still. I start thinking about how four square walls can be a jail cell or can be a cozy nest, depending on context.

In October, just a week and a half after I first met Lauren, I started a Masters program in Urban Sustainability — a discipline that marries environmental concerns with those of social justice — at a university on the west side of Los Angeles. It’s a low-residency program, meaning that most of it takes place online during the evening hours. But at the beginning and middle of every semester, all of the student cohorts assemble for a full-time, in-person residency on campus — a jam-packed week of class discussions, interactive workshops, group projects, lectures, and panels, with lunch and snack breaks squished paper-thin between the learning blocks.

We spend a lot of time talking about…heavy shit. About all the ways that capitalism conspires against collective good and the good of the earth…