get hit with dread the night before your flight, as you always do whenever you leave your Manhattan shoebox. tell your husband: we could always stay home. try to pass it off like you’re joking. he looks at you funny. he knows you’re not. 

land in Vegas. the flight attendant with burns on his face says he hopes you win big. you want to tell him you’re not a gambler, you’re an explorer. instead, say nothing. turn your nose up at the other passengers.

wait for your luggage at carousel 23. sit on the floor so you can charge your phone because the cable doesn’t reach the chairs. this airport is different than any you’ve been to before. there are slot machines, elaborate water fountains, and big TVs inviting you to Thunder Down Under and MGM Grand. the people on the screen look much more sophisticated than the ones you see around you in the airport.

stop at a Mexican place across from Mandalay Bay before you start the drive. the meat is so far removed from the animal that you aren’t even sure what you ordered. eat it anyway. the water tastes funny. set it aside.

take one last glance down the strip before you leave. you thought you’d be immune to the glitz and the glam but you’re not, not more than anyone else, and you can’t help but feel that your destiny is near. the feeling fades as you drive away from the city. 

before you lose signal, check the schedule for the Sphere. maybe you can come back a day early and catch a show. hope that Anyma is playing, because you need something that grand and terrible to truly feel awe. 

dread again during the drive because you like small spaces and this desert knows no bounds. know innately that you belong in a cage.

arrive in Death Valley just before sunset. unpack the tent you got off your wedding registry. feel bad for your husband because the Mexican food gave him a stomachache. settle into the tent. imagine Captain Hook—even though you’re nowhere near the ocean—slashing through the fabric and killing you in the night. sleep poorly on the rocky ground and be cold.

 your cartilage piercing bleeds overnight from lying on your slide. you got it four years ago and it’s still not fully healed. scrape the blood off with your dirty fingernails.

embark on an eight-mile hike in the Italian hiking boots your husband got you for Christmas. start on the Golden Canyon trail, at the fork switch to the Badlands loop, and make the detour to see the Red Cathedral. it all looks the same to you. tall dark rock jutting out of bone-colored sand. fall only once and catch yourself with your palms: they bruise. at a peak, get an overwhelming urge to throw your phone into the valley below. get an overwhelming urge to throw yourself in with it.

feel nostalgia. not from some long-buried ancestral knowledge but from Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons.

realize you have a fever when you get back to the campsite. make ramen on the camp stove. toss the cheap noodles and drink the broth.  

fall asleep to the sound of blood rushing in your ears because it’s so damn quiet out in the desert. your blood sounds like a flushing toilet.

wake up and spend thirty minutes blowing your nose in the campground bathrooms. your body is trying to expel all the dust and sand you inhaled in the last twenty-four hours. 

wish you were tougher.

visit the sand dunes. listen to the desert-trip playlist you made on Spotify and think that being barefoot and pregnant and living a simple life surrounded by nature might not be so bad. then remember you come from a long line of narrow hips and C-sections. you would never survive a home birth.

take a scenic drive through the mountains afterwards. check out the “Artist’s Palette,” a part of the mountain painted green and pink and blue by nature. wish that you belonged to the beautiful land. 

go to sleep, wake up, and your throat is raw. the desert is trying to force you out. 

wonder why the earth is rejecting you. does it know that you composted for six months? saved food scraps in your tiny freezer and dragged it half a mile through Hell’s Kitchen to the nearest compost bin, even in the summer when the heat melted the food and made you smell like rotting garbage. you only stopped because the last two times you went the bins were full.

hike through Mosaic Canyon. the way the rocks are caked into the ground reminds you of a table your dad used to have in the backyard. he got rid of it when the concrete started to crumble. 

have a hard time finding your footing in some of the steeper climbs. a bug won’t leave you alone because it can smell the orange in your string backpack. shudder when you hear it buzzing in your ear.   

after the hike, check your reflection in the rental car’s side mirror. your pale face is sunburnt despite diligently applying 70 SPF Neutrogena sunscreen. 

hope to finally see a coyote by the campsite tonight, but no animal will come near you. you are too filled with forever chemicals and microplastics to be seen as food. go to sleep.

 wake up before your husband and take a walk. your fever has turned into chills. look to the sky and the ground and the cacti and beg for forgiveness. beg for acceptance.

receive none. and why should you? what did you deserve to be a part of this? you know, and the earth knows, you’ve done nothing. 

you don’t want to belong to Vegas and LED bulbs, the casino and mystery meats and Magic Mike, but you do. just because you never got the nose job you always wanted doesn’t make you au natural. just because you listen to Lou Reed and America and REM and can sing all the words to Africa by Toto doesn’t make you a cowboy. you belong to a planet made of plastic and metal and toxic seed oils and gasoline.

wonder if you can undo everything that’s ever been done to you and maybe the earth, not the world, will accept you back as one of its children. wonder if you can take back the Lasik and the hair dye and the ear piercings and the tattoo on your wrist and the ivy league education and the car your parents got you in high school and the shots you received at your physical and the formula you were fed as a baby.

accept that it’s futile. your husband books a hotel in Palm Springs because he knows you’re too sick to continue on in a tent. you lasted three nights in the wild and now you can relax in a hotel hot tub and buy souvenirs no one wants in a desert town that really shouldn’t exist. you feel a sort of kinship with the city.

stop at the Amex lounge in the airport before you board your flight. eat three plates of food from the buffet even though you’re not that hungry. you already feel so much better. 

try the slots. win five dollars. 

go home.