From that brutal moment of self-implosion
when the flash of realization is scarring your retinas,
you feel it

and you make yourself small in the big space that's opened up in the world for you


just you.

There is nobody else in this desolate expanse of personal loathing.

It isn't that there can't be.
There are no fences, no twists of barbed wire around your boundaries
to keep out the coyotes,
no deep slices in the earth filled with cold water,
no telephone lines
to snag the birds
that do not fly over your head.

the valley is empty

there are no plants growing,
and the desaturated ground cracks like the dry skin of your hands
and the sky is blue for miles
no clouds
no rain
no change
except perhaps a little white wisp every few days
that plants deep in the recesses of your darkness a seed it fails to water.

You are alone

alone for miles

because the travelers you pray will carve new roads in your dusty ugliness
never arrive
and those that ask for passage are tourists.

it is your fault, my love, that they stray towards a greener safety, it is your fault that you can maintain appeal only in the fleeting illusions you broadcast in the heat

you deceive them into thinking that you are worth the walk,
but you never are.

Your soil is empty

long months of unspeakable heat have burned every mineral,
every trace of life from the ground.

there is a fire somewhere every few days, or a dust storm,
weak twists of wind that stir the dead particles into your eyes and nose and mouth
and make you choke and sneeze on your own incompetence.

It keeps the land dead.
It keeps you dead
because there are no sprouts
there is no water
no viable earth
and the air is thin and full of toxins
but you breathe it
because what else can you do?

there is no-one in the emptiness but you,
no-one to curl with you behind the rocks that lend you shade
from the searing sun
(that bitch)

and then there are the invaders,
persistent pioneers who try and try and try to build and till and fertilize
work work work the land without comprehension
without the understanding that there is nothing to work
there is nothing to build or till or fertilize
there is nothing here that can be solved with such blunt simplicity of purpose.

They do not understand and you don't want them there

but no-one else wants you
no-one else wants to inhabit your waterless territory and
tell you that even the subtle curves of the sunken earth are beautiful
that the unyielding cover of blue is beautiful,
or that you, you, you
pathetic sniveling thing
are worth a damn.