I Come From

Saturn Stone

I come from a cold place. But not cold like empty, cold like cold. Cold like 32° and frost-hardened dirt. Where the tree bark is as thick as skin and the soil beneath them is as black as night. The air is dry and it bites down on your nose as it cleans your lungs— with no moisture to choke you in disease. 

But I was born in a damp place. A place where the moss is always green and the pavement never quite dries. Where the creatures living in the dirt outnumber those living on top of it, and the sun hides behind constant overcast. The same skin-thick trees circle around my city home and a 48° breeze swings through their needles as I tell them about my day, my week, my life. 

I lay a handful of green tea at their roots as an offering and apologize for not loving them better. I run my hand along their red surface and inhale the sweet forest scent while I try to dream up a way to love them the way they are meant to be. It brings me only heartbreak as I realize that I can’t. My DNA did not grow me to live here and to love these trees like my own family has never been my job— it never could be. A sick jealousy swims in my stomach for the people who call these trees their brothers and sisters, grandfathers and grandmothers, and then it subsides when I remember the horrible things that were forced to endure, and the lost history that was ripped from their fingers.  

I was born in this place, and I could stay here until my bones rejoin the trees. 

But, I come from a cold place. A cold, dry place. I am afraid that when I kiss the hot damp pavement beneath me for the last time and I feel the overcast’s rainy tears soak me down to my bones, I might never pick up my bags and leave. 

I am afraid that the cycles of immigration have stuck an immovable wedge in between where I came from and where I was born, so that I might never feel fully at home. I know that my home is in the arctic circle, surrounded by inky black earth buried under a blanket of snow and lit up by the dim light of day-long sunset. But the wedge… the wedge is 48° and rainy. It smells like the Ho rainforest and sounds like Lake Union rocking beneath my houseboat’s living room floor. 

I know I come from a place that is ready and waiting, full of 2000 years of tradition and love, where the bones of my family have long rejoined the trees. I know I can live there and call it my home, free of guilt and sadness, knowing that I am taking away from no one else, where they come from.

I come from a cold place. Not cold like empty, cold as in the winter chill that tries to seep its way through the wool blanket my grandmother made, as I sleep soundly beneath the rafters cut from the trees with bark as thick as skin. 

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Saturn Stone is a child of Seattle, WA, who loves nothing more than to curl up under the pine trees and create. Though they go through life as an artist, they are also an author, a student, and a business owner. Their greatest joys in life come from exchanging artwork with others and dancing in the rain.