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I fell ill while living in the aging dorms of a former Indian boarding school—a place where the stolen childhoods of Native kids are remembered daily by every student who attends.
Lying on a plastic mattress in the sticky heat, waiting out a high fever, I struggled out of bed to close the blinds as the sun went down. Catching sight of my face in the glass under the glare of harsh orange lights, I was instantly pulled back to childhood: sitting in a tribal housing complex, listening to my parents argue in hushed tones next door. I remembered watching a hawk cut across matching streetlights and rez dogs heading back to sleep on quiet porches. I had envied their freedom to simply wander.
Looking out into the courtyard, an owl sat in a weathered oak across the cracked circle drive while a discarded Sonic cup rattled in the wind. Past and present blurred together. How many children lay sick in this place with no medicine, no family, and no way home? Staring through bloodshot eyes at my reflection, I wondered if an ancestor was stepping through the glass to take me home.
The fever broke by dawn, but the raw convergence of grief, anger, humility, and connection remains etched in my memory.
I fell ill while living in the aging dorms of a former Indian boarding school—a place where the stolen childhoods of Native kids are remembered daily by every student who attends.
Lying on a plastic mattress in the sticky heat, waiting out a high fever, I struggled out of bed to close the blinds as the sun went down. Catching sight of my face in the glass under the glare of harsh orange lights, I was instantly pulled back to childhood: sitting in a tribal housing complex, listening to my parents argue in hushed tones next door. I remembered watching a hawk cut across matching streetlights and rez dogs heading back to sleep on quiet porches. I had envied their freedom to simply wander.
Looking out into the courtyard, an owl sat in a weathered oak across the cracked circle drive while a discarded Sonic cup rattled in the wind. Past and present blurred together. How many children lay sick in this place with no medicine, no family, and no way home? Staring through bloodshot eyes at my reflection, I wondered if an ancestor was stepping through the glass to take me home.
The fever broke by dawn, but the raw convergence of grief, anger, humility, and connection remains etched in my memory.