There’s this red brick apartment building called the Kulshan on High St. that I almost moved into after our rent hiked. Kulshan is a Lummi word for the summit of a peak that has been blown off by an explosion. Back when I wasn’t drinking and my parents had picked my name, I stood in front of the Kulshan a few days before Halloween with a friend of a friend who lost their grandmother's camera at the Horseshoe Cafe. So I’ll stop where I can // Find some fried eggs and country ham. Near the Canadian border, I was pulled away from staring at the city through the central hallway of the red Kulshan apartment building by an earbud that attached me to their bleached brain-cell and we went halfsies on Albuquerque by Neil Young. Albuquerque stems from Latin for white oak. We found their camera in the pore-ing rain. I got sent a playlist in thanks featuring Heart of Gold, a Neil Young song about mining.
I was drinking a Kulshan Red in my folks’ Airbnb past the Lettered Streets when I told them I changed my name to Maggie, meaning pearl. Kulshan is a Lummi word for shot at the extreme end. They rejected my counteroffer and I took my folks around town through matching masks making Mondays smell like the dentist’s chair. I walked home alone past the Kulshan Red brick building when its door was wide open, held with a cinderblock, stumbled all the way through and looked out over Bellingham Bay, which rained like bulk, pretended Mt. Baker was that way. I’ll find somewhere // Where they don’t care // Who I am. Mt. Baker is the English name for Kulshan. A tabby cat who lived on the fire escape got all territorial and I left before we had a confrontation. Back at my apartment on High St., I drank the last of the Kulshan Red. Oh, Albuquerque // Albuquerque. Albuquerque was a tribute song, while I was known to name the dead.