What did I learn in the desert? 

To resign to feel it’s hot breath on my neck,
to map the sweat blooming and gathering behind my ear,
traverse tiny new ponds on my nose,
a new cartography,
to be present with the dilemmas. 

The questions are the vehicle, the spinning wheels,
the engine

we are,
nearly 8 billion of us, waiting
hand-in-hand with our twinkling maybe heirs
at a meeting place in the road

A parting—
in one direction – ambition, our shoulders steeled to bear a steep hill,

the other — resignation, shoulders at ears, the slow climb

Will we ride invention towards the edge of our imagination?
or wait here,
continuing to put our coins in a hole in the ground
willing a metal tree to bloom
there to distract us from the raising temps 
the waters bouncing at our ankles
the children’s bellies swelling
fires wild, unstoppable, fields cracking in every direction

They don’t see those at the front of the group,
refused to look at their cheeks, their looking glass eyes,
Refuse to listen and believe
Those lifted off their feet, pushed towards the line.
The front liners aren’t the ones who get to make the choice 
of this way or that. 
their bodies purpling with bruises, weathering
the storms.

Isn’t it better to head in the way of possibility
and leave the inevitability of demise to shrink behind us?
Even if its scary
Even if the way isn’t clear?
Isn’t it prudent to practice the stretch of dreams
towards life
rather than close our eyes and hold on to our fragile buoyancy?

Questions are stuffed in my luggage like souvenirs.
Awe at the labor of hard-fought agreement,
the stunning, slow choreography
with and around our complicated relationships,
with and around the hurt, the responsibility, the neglect, the genius, the stolen,
the stolen genius
the mixing, the separation, the open palms, the slaps,
the aloofness, the eye contact.
and lack.
And abundance.

Erin Sharkey is a writer, arts, and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis. She is the editor of A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (Milkweed Editions ’23). Erin is a founding coop member of the Fields at Rootsprings, a retreat and respite space in central MN, and co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts collective called Free Black Dirt. She is the producer of film projects, including Sweetness of Wild, an episodic web film, and Small Business Revolution, which explored challenges and opportunities for Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities in the summer of 2021. Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, the Givens Foundation, Penumbra Theatre, Coffee House Press, the Bell Museum of Natural History, Black Visions, Headwaters Foundation and the Jerome Foundation. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

Erin is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP28. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.

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Reflection – Home from COP28