road trip

we sleep soundly, dry throat, wet eyes, tears coming easily in the cold morning, in the cold overcast morning waiting for sunlight. but the clouds thin and clear out, the wind dies, the heat comes and sand swirls around our feet, building into dunes and eventually deserts, and again it is cold as ice in the darkness, many stars up above. we wander, grateful for our mysteriously intelligent animals who can sniff out the water so we may not drown in dust. we wonder, grateful for our inquisitive minds that are never idle, so that we may not disappear in the wind. and we wait, we just follow the path, we stopped looking for the end of the desert, the far off city of gold.

we sit down and sink in and it is mud and we are dissolving like a sugar cube in a cup of bitter coffee on the stained counter of a diner by the side of the road on a long stretch between cities. out where someone is always coming and going and speeding toward their destination unable to think about this barren beautiful land between, populated by hawks, and scrub, and hills, and the occasional row of power lines or cellphone tower.

there is service here and you call while i am stopped for gas in the middle of the night and you probably have something horrible to tell me but it seems meaningless out here, at night. it seems forgotten. it seems light weight and wispy. it seems like you might have said something but you don't and we hang up and i get back in the car and keep driving.