The morning after the YBA meeting, I woke with the taste of ash and fire still on my tongue.

Not literal ash—though my lungs felt burned from holding back laughter last night when Alejandro so confidently declared my destruction.

But the kind of ash that comes from standing too close to flames and surviving. It clung to me, settled in the fine cracks of my skin, and reminded me that I wasn’t done yet.

My apartment was still dim, curtains pulled tight against the blinding sun. A single ...