I wonder why the desert feels like Mars. Like another world we can only visit briefly, fixed up for humans but not really FOR us.
Those little shops offering crystals and wine, thrift stores graffitied with meditating astronauts in a universe of holographic color. Mobile homes alone on barren brown hills and The Rainbow Chicken advertises CBD oil on a hand-painted billboard.
The wind carries dust for a thousand years, sprinkles sand in my Moscow Mule like a little offering from the universe:
Taste Me.
I’m surrounded by desert willows, staring at a rusting green door full of bullet holes. Alien wildlife, trees like pillars and cactus spreading across the sand barely contained behind meager rock borders.
I can put my feet down and feel wood. Take three steps and be in the dirt. Ten steps more and my boots will crunch across smooth pebbles and stand at the edge of the koi pond. A whole other universe, a murky green world through which golden beings fly.
I guess I’m the alien here.
After all, I’m only visiting.
*SLOW CLAP*|