Desert

Desert. The barren wasteland of my soul is longingly empty. If I had to search the sands for some form of strength, love, joy, peace, nourishment, I would find only sand. It stretches miles in every direction and the sun beats down upon me, making me itch and twist and twirl on the hot, windless air. Though the day has only begun, I feel life ebbing and flowing beneath the sands, hope and life calling out to be seen, despite the death that surrounds me. What does this mean to me? You have deserted me. Your leaving is this desert, your abandonment is this vacant, empty place where life ceases to exist or have meaning beyond the superficial. Or, maybe, buried deep beneath the sand is the life I’ve been seeking above the surface. Maybe it is my error and not your desertion that has left me in this desert of wasted breath. Maybe I should look again at all that is around me.

Yet, all I see is death. It is more than barren…it is a vapid waste of space, lingering, burning pain, death, sorrow, suffering, empty life. I watch a scorpion scuttle across the hot sand, pinchers moving. How appropriate. The poison of your words, the taint of your touch, sting me still. I recall the way that you use to love me, the way that you use to look at me, before this desert stretched out before me. I have to wonder if it was worth the pain. Some say that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I wonder…I wonder. I simply find it hard to believe. I would rather have never loved…

Desert. Nothing but arid heat and waterless vistas. I want to tell you more than the simple words I pen with my shaking hand but I find that poison does not course through me as it does through you. Even the black scorpion has left me, alone in this immense, sun raped land. What would I do with your apology, should it ever come to me? What would I do with your kiss should it ever seek my lips again? I cannot imagine myself wrapped in your arms again as I sit in the midst of your desertion but tomorrow is another day. Maybe there could be an oasis in this land of death. Maybe there could be hope in this land of despair.

Or maybe it is all an illusion, a mirage made up by the heat waves of our love lost forever. Would I be content in the mirage, in the fallacy? I would delightfully pretend in order to have you once more. I remember your touch, your presence, so very reassuring, so very absent in this desert. I long for you, I do, I cannot lie. Not here. Not in the midst of death. But, I feel that even the façade would cave under the pressure of the truth. I could not, therefore, live in the mirage, I could not trust the illusion. I gaze at the sun in mild rebuke. Though it has merely risen, I long for it to set and for my own self to be rid of its condemning glare. I hunch over and end my good-bye sentence to you, crumble up the paper and throw it to the wind, because you’re never going to read the words anyway.

It is only myself in this desert of your abandonment, after all. It was your choice to desert me and leave me starving for your love, thirsty for your touch, in the newly barren landscape of our relationship. An apology would never occur to you, a day in the shade would be so welcome but you’ll never call me into your fortress. Someday, I will look upon you with different eyes, eyes not shaded with love’s memories, and I will be able to walk upon the hot sands without them burning my wounded sole but my soul’s wounds will bleed for long after the other healing has begun. Oh, what you have selfishly wrought with your leaving. Oh, what decay you have brought to me with your callous removal. May I never see this desert again…may I never kiss your lips again…may I never be held by you again…never…never…






May 1, 2009 Room to Write Diving In Exercise 1