There you go, the sky turns dark again. Over these infinite sands of desertion the grey clouds swirl. They caress the dunes that stand tall and red against the darkening sky. There flies the sand, helpless particles of my thought over the landscape of my doing, and hers. A bolt of pearly lightning tears the canvas of the sky in half and hurls like the trident of Zeus against the ground I love so much, my barren desert sands and the smell of rock, tears that died unseen in dark, quiet corners beneath the stones. And doubts that sometimes shake and shift the ground at night in small tremors that want to collapse the world.

I always knew I was a bird. With grey wings that turn brilliant white against the stormy sky. A bird that was part of Everything, part of being the lonely red stratified desert sands it flew over and part of being the violet angry swirls of the anxious sky it swam in, a part of everything that had created it and a part of everything it had created. And it was terribly afraid of this belonging, this inevitable association with Everything, for it only wanted to belong to itself and never get lost in the fearsome swirls of stranger thoughts.

Belong to itself, and her.

But then, it had to rain. The bloody sun bid its goodbye and could not say for certain when it would be back. The smoky curtain of black storm came out of nowhere and clothed my playful skies. Evening came like it always did outside me, only this time within, and with the same universal sadness that it always stood for. At night Hope would light the sky with its brilliant white fork of lightning, shouting over the din of the storms that everything would be okay, but when it was gone the featureless darkness of the night pressed even more and I was a prisoner in my own barren desert sands, a victim of my own doings. I clutched handfuls of the cold sand and hugged myself and pretended it would be all over with the next sunrise.

But it had to rain. That invisible and much-loved film came over the light of the sky, keeping out the more cheerful rays of the sun outside my domain. The low clouds swirled imperceptibly and rumbled right above my head. That cold breeze touched me with the feared huge expanse of Nothing that tingles my palms every time I look down from a great height.

And then it rained. All over the desert sands she came pouring, with all her memories, her eyes, her words, promises and hopes and difficulties we had passed and the alternate world we had discovered. It all came pouring, all over the desert sands in every direction I could see, affecting everything, bathing each particle of sand with itself. There was no refuge, no cover, nowhere to run. Nothing could be saved from the rain. I crouched and hugged myself, drenching in the grey rain that was my own doing, that came from the swirlings of a cloud that we had created. It is always this way inside my mind.

Some time has passed since then. The rains have left, although the clouds still hover above, higher up, but still keeping out the light of the day. The grounds shake more often, and some dunes have changed colour. I am no longer sure how firm these sands are beneath my feet, whether the quiet unstoppable whisper of the air from Nothing lurks among my particles of sand. I am not sure there is this world. I am not sure if I’ve been dreaming it all along.

ηōVō