Frankie Concepcion
Migration Patterns
When the smoke becomes too much for their eyes, they ask to be seated inside—tears and soot accumulating behind the eyelids, so the server is tasked not only to carry their drinks to the new table, but to lead them by the hand toward it. What they don’t tell you about America, Cora thinks. Eventually, you get used to the smell of fire. She has been living in Phoenix for six months, and already, two of them have been smoke-filled.
“You have an accent,” Her date says, as they feel their way inside. “I just mean, it’s one of those things you can’t really tell from a dating profile, you know?”
At their new table, Cora’s date orders the Keto Bowl, tells her he’s trying to put on some muscle. She orders off the vegan menu even though all the reviews say to try the steak tartare. She wants to make an impression; wants to prove to her date that she is someone who makes the right choices, who is worthy of his time.
“Did you drive here?” he asks her, after their orders are taken.
“I took the Light Rail,” Cora says. She knows he asks this question only to be polite, which is why she does not tell him about the half-hour spent waiting for the shuttle to the station before deciding to travel the rest of the way on foot. Nor does she tell him about the woman at the shuttle stop, who was her mother’s age, and was clutching a grocery cart that seemed to carry everything she owned. Like Cora, she wore a mask to protect herself from the smoke. She asked Cora when the next bus was coming. But when Cora checked the Metro app, in the space where green numbers should have indicated their wait time, there were simply two horizontal lines—like a timer had run out. She was still there when Cora walked away.
What could I have done? she wants to say. What else could I do but leave? Instead, Cora asks her date what brought him to Phoenix.
If Cora’s mother were here, she would have admonished Cora for taking so long to ask him a question. You want to know how to make someone fall in love with you? She would always say. Ask them questions. Make them feel like they can tell you anything.
Cora’s date tells her he grew up in Boston, that he is currently working for a start-up. But Cora can only think of her mother as her date tells her how he ended up out West. Hours earlier, as she walked away from the woman at the shuttle stop, she had even tried to reach her mother again. But like the last two times Cora had called, there was no response. She is still thinking about the unanswered ringing, the slick weight of the phone against her cheek, when her date’s voice pulls her back into her seat.
“I almost quit,” he is saying. “At first, the company had been working on an app that could predict traffic patterns to help emergency services get where they needed to be in half the time. But a year in, they transitioned to some bullshit food delivery service, so I told them it wasn’t what I signed up for. I thought I would get to do something more important.” Cora knows this is the part where she is supposed to reassure him, to validate his choices with her continued interest.
Cora wants to be liked. She wants this date to go well, if for no other reason than to have something good to tell her mother later. “So why didn’t you?” she says now. “Quit?”
“Oh. Well,” he says, and from his expression she knows this was the wrong thing to ask. “I moved across the country for this job. Put in all those hours. Leaving would have meant I did it all for nothing.”
*
You must feel really lucky, then. To be able to come here. This was a message Cora received soon after downloading her first dating app. It’s not just about survival here, you know? Here, there’s opportunity. Here, you can dream bigger. So, what kind of visa do you have? When she responded that she wasn’t sure she should be answering that question, the sender quickly unmatched; she didn’t even have time to take a screenshot for her mother.
Did you know there could be over a billion climate refugees before we even reach retirement age? said another man, who Cora had agreed to meet at a sports bar in Scottsdale. His voice straining over the din of the basketball game, he began to talk about climate displacement and migration patterns; how already in Florida and Louisiana cities were flooding faster, the water staying longer. Cora recognized those words. They were old, despite the novelty of their use to describe America and its people; despite the fact that, when it came to countries like hers, it had simply been called bad weather. But when Cora shared this with her date at the bar, he seemed offended by the comparison. You don’t get it. New Orleans could become a swamp in like, a decade, he said. Miami could cease to exist.
*
When the food arrives it tastes like ash, and yet when the server asks, Cora and her date tell them everything is perfect. Across the room, two women walk into the restaurant and wait patiently at the host stand to be seated. Smoke follows them in. “I remember when people were mad about wearing masks inside,” one woman says, while the other takes off her KN95 with a deep, grateful breath. “Now we’ve got to wear them outside, too?” Cora looks up to see her date’s reaction to this, but his attention is on her.
“What about you?” Cora’s date says when the server is gone. “What made you want to move away from home?”
This, at least, is a conversation Cora is familiar with, even though the question makes her flinch. She tells him that she moved to the city in the summer for grad school. That it was her mother who had convinced her to go, discouraging her from applying to schools in Manila in favor of universities abroad. And while Cora was less convinced that leaving could offer any greater knowledge, neither did she blame her mother for believing this. After all, it was her own mother –Cora’s grandmother, a child of World War II—who taught her that home was a place to leave behind.
“And now I'm here. In the desert. With you.” She tells him that her mother had liked that he looked ambitious, had lingered on a picture of him wearing a suit at some corporate event. It was she, Cora tells him, who encouraged Cora to swipe right. Even the dress she is wearing is one her mother had picked out on a video call, just a few nights before. Now, as she watches her date’s gaze wander from her eyes down to the frilled neckline of her dress, she makes a mental note to tell her mother that she’d made the right choice. “She’s the only reason I’m on the apps in the first place,” Cora says.
“Really? Aren’t there guys back home? It sounds like you grew up in paradise,” her date says, and she knows he is thinking of the pictures her mother had pushed her to include in her profile: the bikini, the palm trees. His lips stretch into a smile. “Honestly, I don’t think you could pay me to leave a place like that.”
“I think she just wants me to find a reason to stay,” Cora says. “Someone to help me settle down.” Like the men she meets, Cora knows her mother wants her to feel grateful, wants her to believe America is a safer place than the one she came from.
Why stay here when you can go anywhere? her mother had said, when she had first begun to encourage Cora’s leaving. Cora knew what she truly meant: Anywhere away from the water.
*
Cora’s memory is full of storms. Months ago, when the American college brochures began appearing on the kitchen table, it was days after a typhoon flooded the yard—waves spilling over the dock, over the breakwater, seeping into the garden earth. Or at least, what was left of their garden, which was not much more than dirt, and the usual, assorted debris of storms: coconut husks, damp clothes, dead fish. A single pink flip flop. It was not the last flood they would have and would be far from the worst. This time, at least, the water had only risen to their ankles.
As a child, she’d believed learning the storms’ names might domesticate them somehow; as if by naming them, she could tame their power: Yolanda. Rolly. Ulysses. But soon, she learned that man-made names did nothing to dissuade the water that showed up at their doorstep each year; nor did it soothe the keening of wind at the back door— so loud, it made her ears pop from the pressure swirling around the house. It did not stop Milenyo from taking away their power for weeks and turning their drinking water to salt. It did not keep Winnie from cracking their windows from the sheer force of wind and rain.
But now, Cora remembers too the first time she woke up surrounded by smoke. That morning, lying in bed in her new Phoenix apartment, she opened her eyes and thought she was underwater. Her throat burned, and everything was covered in a dirty, gray film; breathing felt like drowning. In her ears, there was a pulsing rush that could only be the sound of a storm— of waves against a door, of rain on a window, of water demanding to be let in.
Mom? she’d called, running into the hallway, the kitchen. Salt water stung her eyes, though she couldn’t tell if it was the ocean or her own tears. She only knew that she and her mother needed to leave, or at least get to the second floor.
Turning towards a door, Cora pushed it open, expecting her mother’s bedroom. Instead, she found herself outside and discovered that what she’d mistaken for water was everywhere— in the trees, blocking out the sun. Disoriented and still searching for her mother, Cora stood there at the threshold of her new home. She inhaled in small sips until the rush in her ears revealed itself as her own heartbeat, and the dry air reminded her of where she was.
Two weeks later, as Cora watched the sky fill with smoke for the second time in a month, another man had asked her on a hike in the Superstition Mountains. Is that a good idea? Is it safe? she’d replied. In response, he told her that he had already prayed for the Lord’s protection, therefore no harm would befall them.
*
“Do you ever think about going back home?” Cora asks her date now.
“Trying to get rid of me so soon?” he replies. She forces herself to laugh, to meet his eyes. There is a sesame seed stuck to his chin.
“But yes. All the time,” he says. “In some ways, it would make life so much simpler. I know my parents want me to.” For a moment, his jaw relaxes, and Cora can tell he is picturing them, imagining himself with them. His lips, stained purple, are soft, and again his eyes drift down the red fabric of her dress, along the fingers that rest lightly on her phone—grazing the two time zones, Manila and Phoenix, that stay visible even when the rest of the screen is black.
He tells her that before he decided to leave, his own father had expected him to take over the family business; couldn’t understand why his own son wouldn’t want to continue his legacy.
“Legacy?” she laughs.
“Yeah! Like… something to leave behind when I’m gone. Something to be remembered by,” he replies earnestly, and she allows him to believe it is the word she does not understand. “But I also know that if I don’t do this now, I never will.”
“Do what?” she says.
“Travel. Explore. Figure out if there’s something better out there. Figure out if I can be someone better.” He smiles then, apologetically. “At least your mom supported your leaving. I wish mine did. And when they heard about the wildfires? Well. You can imagine. But I told them they didn’t have to worry. Not here in the city, at least. For us, it’s all just a bunch of smoke isn’t it?” Suddenly, she can taste the saliva in her own mouth.
“But it’s not just smoke,” Cora says. “Just because you can’t see the damage, that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. People die. People can lose everything.”
“I know that,” Cora’s date says. For the first time, his tone hardens. “You think I don’t know that? I just meant that there’s no reason for us to be afraid. Not here at least.”
“No,” Cora says. “You don’t know. Who are you to say what’s dangerous or not? When people should or shouldn’t be afraid?”
“Well, what if I don’t want to live like that?” Cora’s date says. “What if I want something more than to just be afraid all the time?”
“It's not about want,” Cora replies. “Sometimes we just don't have a choice.” She is sick of pretending the smoke is normal, that there is no reason to be afraid. She is sick of lying. But she also does not know how to tell her mother that nowhere —not even America— is safe; that even as she drowned on the other side of the globe, Cora’s world was burning. Was this what her date had meant when he used the word legacy?
Now, as her date silently brings his fork to his lips, his jaw grinding steadily, Cora knows she should ask him another question. Instead she stands, not bothering to excuse herself from the table. She can already hear her mother’s admonishments; wants, for once, to give her something more than news of another bad date. Still, she goes to the bathroom and takes her phone out of her purse. She calls her mother. The phone rings, and rings, and rings.
Thunder between her ears. Sweat pooling in her palms.
When Cora returns to the table, she finds that her plate is already gone. At the door, a server is flipping the sign to Closed, and only a few people remain at their tables, hastily signing checks.
“They’re closing the restaurant early. They just made an announcement,” says Cora’s date. While she was gone, the wind had turned, and the fire was now expected to jump over a highway— one of the major arteries that ran through the city. “I guess they’re just trying to get everyone home safe,” he adds, though Cora could not tell whether he sounded sincere or not, if he felt chastised by his own words.
*
After her first smoke-filled morning, Cora had learned how to sign up for emergency text alerts through the state’s emergency information network. She researched which masks were best for keeping out the worst of the smoke, began to keep all her most important things —her passport and IDs, her laptop, a stash of cash sealed in a Ziploc bag— within reach of her bed.
Recently, she’d even discovered that like typhoons, wildfires had their own season, and many their own names: Cave Creek. Wallow. Telegraph. Shake. This she’d learned on a date with a man from California who, in 2017, had been forced to flee his home in the middle of the night as flames approached.
No sirens, no alerts, nothing. You only need to go through it once to know what’s worth taking with you, he’d said to her, not knowing that years of flooding had already taught her this particular lesson.
*
Outside the restaurant, Cora puts her mask back on and begins the walk back to the Light Rail. In the dark, the air seems even thicker than before. There are no stars; there is no moon. Even the streetlights, with their pale blue glow, have been reduced to ghosts of themselves.
She is at a corner waiting for the cross signal when she realizes a car has stopped next to her, even though the traffic light is a sickly, damp green. Its horn beeps, and when Cora looks through the window, there is her date: face lit up by the dashboard, a bandana hanging around his neck.
“You can’t walk in this smoke,” he says. “Let me at least drive you home.” His words drowned out by a longer, frantic beeping. This, despite the fact that she had let him pay for her meal, had not even bothered to take her leftovers. They hadn’t even kissed goodbye. But now, here he is, obstructing traffic. The car behind him swerves wildly past, but more cars are coming. Cora gets in.
She tells him her address, and he punches it into his phone. For a while, they drive in silence. Cora takes off her mask and inhales deeply from the cool air coming through the vents. Through the glass, she watches the city lights blink past, the landscape made grayscale by the air, the streetlights. They leave downtown behind, passing the baseball stadium, the arts district, the clusters of university buildings and luxury apartments. Then, abruptly, even what little light Cora can see disappears too, as they slip onto the highway. There are surprisingly few cars out, and the asphalt yawns in a way that usually reminds her of a gray wave, swallowing. Tonight, it looks more like aftermath; like the earth a wave leaves behind— barren and black as soot.
Cora looks to the driver’s seat and sees her date’s eyes flicking between her and the road and back again. Distracted, he is almost handsome. And yet, when their eyes meet, Cora realizes she is thinking not of their date, or kissing him, or the fact that they are alone together in this car. She is thinking again of her mother, and their last conversation.
“Do you like my dress?” she says to her date now, touching the fabric. “My mom chose it for me, you know. She helped me pick it out for our date, just a few days ago. I thought the red was too much, too… eager. We almost had an argument about it. But you like it, don’t you?”
Cora’s date hesitates. “I… I do,” he finally says. “You must really miss her. You talk about her a lot.”
“I don’t.” Cora says, turning back to the window. She wonders what it might be like, to be like him: to come to this city by way of ambition rather than necessity; to regret nothing that he has left behind. “I don’t miss her. Why would I, when we talk every day? Except for the past couple of days, of course. But that’s not her fault. If she could, she would. I’m sure she would.”
She tells him it was only because her mother had tried to end their last call early that Cora realized that, on her side of the world, a storm was coming. “She probably just doesn’t have any service. Or the power went out. That’s nothing new. Nothing to worry about just yet.” But the fact that she had tried to keep it a secret told Cora that her mother was afraid. After all, hadn’t Cora herself taken care to turn her camera on only when she was inside, to hide the masks and the air purifiers? Hadn’t she learned to mute herself when she coughed? When asked about her new home, she had even resorted to distracting her mother with stories about her latest crush, sent screenshots of her date’s profiles and asked for her mother’s help composing messages to her matches. Let her tell Cora what to wear. “But if you like the dress, then it was all worth it. Oh, she’ll be so happy to hear that. She really will,” she says to her date.
When the road crests over a peak in the landscape, Cora knows that she is almost home; that soon they will be able to see the valley below. She can see it now. And beyond the valley, past the patches of desert and sprawling parking lots, past the houses with their green lawns and the red-earth wilderness: there too is the fire, just visible over the other side of the mountains that surround the city.
At first, it is no more than a haze, a halo. Burnt orange against a backdrop of oil-slick night. But the longer Cora looks, the more the color solidifies itself into pinpricks, then into flame. The air rippling-hot. In some places, the skeletons of cholla and ocotillo sizzle, black and shriveled as discarded matchsticks. In others, the earth has already been stained red with fire retardant— a breakwater between the city and the flames.
“Oh god,” her date says. “Oh fuck.” Hitting the brakes so hard that their bodies jerk forward, he stops the car, afraid to move, afraid to keep hurtling towards the fire.
“What should we do?” he says. His eyes are wide, and Cora can see the orange glow of the fire reflected in them. On the other side of the glass, red brake lights show Cora that they are not the only ones thinking of rerouting, of taking the next exit.
Reaching for his hand on the steering wheel, she is surprised when he grabs her fingers, holds them tight. She is proud, she tells herself, that despite speaking to her mother almost every day, Cora has protected her from all knowledge of smoke, of fire. She is proud of sparing her mother this fear. Soon, she knows, the road they are on will turn west, and the fire will disappear back over the lip of the mountain. They still have a little more time. She tells him to keep going.
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© 2025 Iron Oak Editions
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Frankie Concepcion is a writer from the Philippines living in Massachusetts. She is a graduate of the M.F.A. at Arizona State University, where she served as Managing Editor for Hayden's Ferry Review. A 2024-25 Tin House Reading Fellow, she has received additional fellowships from Tin House, Sibling Rivalry Press and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, and her writing has been published in Barzakh, StoryQuarterly, Joyland, HYPHEN, and more.
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© 2025 Iron Oak Editions
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