Desert

The word like leaped to love,
and I lose myself in a desert
to see you grow.

But why a blatant desire --
to rid myself of water?
to quench grains and deprive cells?

A man walks through the desert.
His skull between sky and sediment,
sees nothing but sand and sun.

Sand is a rude lover,
rough against my wounds.
Her dunes of adversity breed apathy.

The sun sits on a throne,
Her whispers on my skin beckon me west,
A silent promise that our horizon is where salvation rests.

So I follow the sun on her pilgrimage,
Oblivious to the adjectives parching and withering.
Oblivious that sun is why sand is sand, not soil

And that horizons never come.

With all they take and little they provide,
A man becomes sand chasing her rays,
his eyes, now quartz, scream desire
A life that never was, locked in a yearning gaze.

I never realized that in a desert, salvation lies nowhere.
That on dunes of adversity it must be built,
And to build an oasis,
one has to wrestle with sand.