The Desert

Who believes in love anymore? Its faint flicker and its dying ember? That pale breath of air in a sun-baked desert, eons of arid nothing to shade it.

My heart once did. It quaked and cried for it. It wanted a mother’s love, a father’s, too. It looked for love in the arms of men and was left wanting. Spent, sweaty and empty. Like a desert, eons baked in the sun.

It married for love and screamed and begged for it. Cajoled and coerced for it. It gave and gave until it hurt to give for it. And got nothing in return. Cracked and desperate and alone. Not even a pale breath of air to fan the flame of it.

The ember burned down, fainted and the ash of it grew cold. Parched and empty, a cold wind blowing through it on a chill desert night. Dark and brooding, bitter and dried up.

I walked away and did not look back. No pillar of salt, I. No longing for what was and what could never be. A reinvented me. Alone and hard, the cracks went deep, the bitterness sank into it. I turn a disinterested eye upon it. A small shrug, a flutter of the hand. A dismissal. A sigh. I turn my face away. Into the wind that blows through my heart.

Arid land stretches before me. The possibilities are endless, untethered. I smile, laugh and stand apart, clear-eyed, seeing the ghosts of love surrounding me. The dying embers of others. Hard eyes fall upon them; I trample the embers and scatter them before me. And walk on into the desert alone, not believing, never believing.