The recipe for muscle cream uses red chilis and . . . see?

In every recipe for healing I forget one ingredient; this is how it goes in migration.

Sam points to a tree, so wide it can shelter all of us. It is a cousin to mahogony, he says, and it heals burns and wounds. It eats dead skin. Take the bark, dry it, pound it, make tea, sieve. Its skin for your skin. Wash your wound. Or, take it internally. I don’t know yet that this tree will haunt my dreams for months.

I stare up at the old tree, the 7…