“The Red Days are here again,”

she whispers before I leave the breakfast table.

Smoke flung from fires fuming

blows all the way to the air above our house, colors the sky like milk, burnishes the sun.

At the margins of the day, the light is rust.

Grandma tells me it wasn’t always this way. Once, the Red Days

were golden,

like a length of new-blossomed goldenrod stretched against a lazy summer sky.

Once, she says, folks threw open their windows

to welcome the June perfume and July’s thundering storms.

I can imagine it if I squeeze shut my eyes and pinch my nose:

no smoke,

just clear, clear blue,

and daisies

and determined milkweed

reaching up to brush the softly singing cicadas.

Every morning during the Red Days,

Grandma tells me she’s sorry.

She wraps me up in her leathery arms,

wets my hair with tears, and says sorry one more time.

It’s kind of awkward.

But I let her do it

because I think she needs to.

“It didn’t have to be this way, my love.

We could have stopped the burning.”

But I don’t mind the Red Days.

This is just how summer is,

and I like the way the smokey light paints the daisies orange,

even if I have to wear a mask when I go outside.

I tell Grandma this,

and I think for a moment I’ve said something terribly wrong.

She presses her fingers to her lips, and I can see them trembling.

And then I see it is just her normal sadness, multiplied times ten.

So it is my turn to wrap my arms around hers,

but I don’t cry

because Grandma is doing enough of that for both of us.

“What was my disaster,” she says,

“is just another page in your almanac.”

I don’t know what almanac means,

but I know about disaster,

and I hold my Grandma’s wet face in my hands.

I tell her she didn’t save the golden days,

she couldn’t put out enough fires to keep The Red Days away,

but outside is the goldenrod

and the milkweed

and some cicadas

and the daisies I can see through the window,

bright asters in dimmed light.

I tell her the world hasn’t gone anywhere.

And we are here, in it.

I tell her I love the daisies.

She kisses me on the head, like always, raining tears in my hair,

tears too small to quench a forest fire

but strong enough to join a stream

and a river

and a salty tear-waved ocean.

And even though it’s kind of awkward,

I’m glad she’s let her tears travel beyond herself

out to the world

to the daisies

to soak the ground

and to save something from the burning

for me to hold in my hands on this summer day.