I stop short on my motorbike no more than fifteen feet away from an elephant. I haven’t seen an elephant in the road over here before. In fact, I’ve never seen an elephant that wasn’t in a place an elephant was supposed to be, like the zoo or a circus. And let’s be clear, I don’t think an elephant should be caged in any of those places either because that’s cruel. But cruelty makes money so I guess elephants are just another victim of capitalism in the grand scheme of things. She is waving her trunk back and forth across the pavement like she’s sniffing out buried treasure. The broken chain around her back right foot jingles with each heavy step she takes. There’s an elephant farm just up the hill. “Farm” may be a generous term. I think today is the day she made her break for it. I guess this elephant and I have that in common. I made my break for it 6 months ago. I ran away. I traded one jungle for another. I can’t sit still if I don’t feel safe. I’m not sure if I’m any safer now.

There are three broken coconuts on the side of the road. Their water seeps out in tiny puddles on the asphalt as an army of leaf cutter ants marches past me with their green flags waving overhead. The air is heavy with smoke. A farmer is burning banana leaves and plastic bottles in front of his hut which creates an odor that smells sweet and toxic. Smokey season makes the horizon beautiful and hazy in the vibrant orange and red sunset. It’s so hot that the white line of the pavement looks like it’s undulating. It reminds me of those old movies where someone is walking through the desert looking for water, or maybe they’re looking for a 7-Up, and this wasn’t a movie at all, but a Superbowl commercial I saw once. Sweat drips from my the tip of my nose and streaks down the center of my breasts to my belly button. I’m wearing my pink bikini. It’s too hot for clothes and besides, I left my clothes in a pile at the back of the party this morning anyway. I don’t want to go back there yet. It’s not as fun when I’m sober. I lose myself in drugs. I disappear. I don’t want people to see the real me. They might not like what they see. I don’t like it, and I know they won’t either. I’ll make it easy and reject them first.

There’s a thick layer of dried mud on the elephant’s back. I imagine she’s hiding years of painful memories tucked deep between wrinkles of her gray skin. She lifts her head and looks right at me.  I always assumed elephants had black eyes, but hers are gold with a white ring around the iris. She is the most beautiful and terrifying creature I have ever seen. For a split second I try to calculate if I can rev my bike fast enough to zoom under her tall legs and be on my way. She looks at least 9 feet tall, but I must admit, I’ve never been that good at estimating anyone’s height, let alone a behemoth, so I decide not to take my chances. I don’t know if I’m still hallucinating a little bit, but I’m pretty certain we’ve synchronized our breathing and I can feel her. She is wise and sad. I have been sad for so long, I almost don’t notice it anymore. I’m just numb. I feel nothing. I am nothing. I never have been.

In an abrupt, unceremonious way, she exhales and turns away from me to walk up the hill. I guess she’s had enough freedom for one day. I have too, so I turn my bike around and drive back to the party.

I recall being about eight years old and getting it into my head that maybe, just maybe, I could write a novel. I sat down and started writing a scene about rugged adventurers meeting in a dusky tavern, gathering to the call of a wizard who had the need for some assistance on a dangerous quest. I knew I needed to describe the environment so that my readers could understand where this was. It was a tavern. What was in a tavern? Well, I had to begin somewhere, so I started to describe the chair by the door, the grain of its wood, the scratches and the stories they told, the dancing shadows of candlelight and drunk farmers playing on its stillness. 
Three pages later and all I had was a fucking chair. 
I am making a map of novel writing, and while in the valleys of realistic characters it says, “here be dragons” in the wasteland of descriptive scenes it warns, “this way lies madness and death!” 
But you won’t beat me. Sure, I am not the chest-beating champion who guffaws in the face of your monstrosity, but I am the one who plays the fool until I see where to cut. And yes, that means I know how to take a beating. 
I feel those beatings in the morning, lying in bed. The blankets gathered upon me look like intricate landscapes I wish I could shrink down into and explore. There’s a curl in the fringe of the sheet that makes a cave where I am sure I would enjoy spending an evening, an evening away from the beatings, in the healing darkness of withdrawal. 
But these havens are too distant for me to reach, too small. My body is a giant amongst them and was I to move to enter and explore, they would be crushed by my magnitude. And so I am still, just looking for this one brief moment at this tiny world that is free from the beatings, free from the need for strategy, the need for cleverness. A world where I wouldn’t have to be so patient. ​