black stones litter a desert plain.
the detritus of nameless eons, strewn
by a forgotten god across the sun-scarred flatland.

rest

shadows dancing atop volcanic
stones and red-painted mesas

this lad has known cataclysms
both corporeal and spiritual

salt winds scour the craggy deadlands, unrelenting.

no one, not ghost nor scribe, will recount the stories hidden therein.

I'm here.

sometimes that's all you want to say.

sometimes that's all you want someone else to say.

the whole thing was a quake, the aftershocks of an unfathomable loneliness.

the tremors ceased, and now we contemplate what we have done.

I wanted her to love me amid rocks
and boulders, within dark forests,
upon limitless seas.

but when she arrived, I was not there.