I can write many stories about yearning. I can write many stories about missing and wanting and remembering what it felt like to be touched, really touched, but they will not bring back what I have lost. Sometimes I think that it is the empty parts of life that make living more than the full parts, just like the silhouette of a man summiting a rock while the sun sets behind him is made into a picture by the man’s absence, no one wants to see the man, they came to see what exists around him and will inevitably swallow him whole, the brilliant orange sun, the greedy sky, the rounded emptiness beyond. I take the picture. The man jokes with his friend. Crumbs of dirt fall from the precipice. The sun sets a little further, and I wrap my arms around myself tighter, burrow into my sweater, your sweater, just your sweater because the guide told me that I wouldn’t need another layer. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know that I run cold. She doesn’t know why this picture does not mean a thousand words to me, it means only one. The sun sets in the desert and already I am struggling to write another story that isn’t about yearning.
I have never learned to love the desert, that raw type of beauty that you have to work for. I enjoy simple things. I enjoy green sprouts shooting up from the ground, juvenile moss crawling over gnarled roots that are old, old and not ancient like the mountains here that have formed this continent. They have formed this continent and they have formed this earth and in a million years they will still be there, praying, watching, waiting, and still I can not find them beautiful but I find them empty, empty except when they erupt with the fruit of the earth.
It is a silent trip. The wind does most of the talking, and in the gaping silence it leaves behind we don’t feel the need to say anything at all. We walk on the spine of the sand and the guide tells us to be careful, but I kick the rocks anyways and watch them tumble down, wondering about the last time something has been moved here. There are vast parts that have not had feet drag over them or breath reach them. Does the desert, too, yearn to be touched?
I wake up at 2 am lost. I wake up again at 5 am, feeling that somewhere deep inside me I have sprouted a leak that will not close as much as I try to stop it. I wander in the darkness, my body caressing the walls. I wonder about the betrayal of a leaky faucet in the desert. As the sun rises the wind bites into me and makes me forget everything at all. I tried to write a story about a place that reminded me of nothing but gave up when I realized that everything reminded me of you.
there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.
From a poem written about the ocean but I think it is wrong, it is a poem about diving into the wreck of the desert, where the ocean will never begin because it does not know the words to describe its formation. Here is the thickest part of the country. Here is the aching part of the ridge. Here is the sun where it falls between the weaving paths of the canyon. Here is the dip that reminds me of your back and here is nothing, nothing at all. There is no one to tell me when the desert will begin and grief will end.
It is our last day in the desert. A sand storm shutters buildings and silences the unsilenceable hawkers selling guides to places that are better left alone. We shelter indoors while the wind beats at the wooden window shades. We do not speak a word, lest the wind find us by ear. The wind, it does not howl, I think, it screams. The wind is not a wolf. The wind is a girl who has had her heart broken for the first time. No. The wind is nothing but wind, a winding agony. I run from lobby to room, room to room, room to lobby, and still the sand coats my glasses and makes my scalp gritty. I can feel the dirt between my toes in bed. I have not showered in days and I feel strangely protective of the layer of dust I have grown, the matted parts of my hair. As if the dust has made me ancient, as if it tells me I am capable of being forgotten. For a brief moment I can imagine surviving in the desert. When they cry here, who collects the tears? Who tells the melancholic that water like that cannot be wasted?
When I cry, I still dial your number, before I remember that I’m a big girl now, alone in the desert. I call my mom instead and she tells me to stop being a masochist, to learn to live my life apart from sadness, to stop cutting my wrists and to grow up, become a woman. She tells me she loves me, so I try to find the words to describe a leaky faucet. Nothing comes out but a drip drip drip. Are you still there? she asks and I cannot even tell her that I do not know where there is anymore. I clear my throat through the grit to tell her I only wish it was that easy.
I think I should throw out your sweater. Even deserts, now, remind me of you.
(excerpt from “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich)
this is going nowhere 