I stepped from a raindrop onto this grainy expanse,
expecting the refreshment of dehydration.
Now cactus roots are deep in my skin
and deliver a depressing realization.

I was drowning slowly, eventually, before
when I lived in suspense in the cloud’s puffy eye.
I waited, wanting air, for a sadness to settle
so the gray fog around me would finally cry.

The drop was thrilling and I remember seeing
the open ground greeting me with a flat, wide palm.
As the dust beneath me focused I felt my skin shrivel,
the panic quickly growing slowly turned to calm.

With a pop I hit the desert and sank into the sand,
Eagerly burrowing into each vacant vein.
I had been told before that the spread was painful;
still I stretched every atom into the terrain.

Now deep in the beads- beneath, above, around-
I rested and waited for the peace I desired.
With each piece of me touching but separate in inches
I found that dissection was not what I required.

Yet it was too late, I had already fallen.
Half of me seeped into the lake of the land.
The other half dissolved and ascended the steps
I descended into the devil’s dry, dusty hand.

I speak with no lips and I see with no eyes,
for half of me thirsts as half of me cries.

I move with no joints and I think with no mind,
for half of me know that I left half behind.