Sunset in the Desert

Sunrise in the desert and you’re here again. A shaman in dusty trainers, your soles held on with Sellotape. You told us, many times, this is how we die: longing for the flood. How many times we laughed. How many times you didn’t. To be polite, this time I offer you a mattress on the floor, a chair by the window, a cup of tea but you let these grow cold claiming you cannot stop. Claiming you must keep moving like a shark that would drown if it stopped swimming. I don’t see a shark when I look at you, I see a tumbleweed drifting over the dry riverbed. Night falls and you step into the dreaming. You claim to be drowning in our town like a fish in a dry Tupperware box. I do not know if we’ll see you again, but if we do and your tune is the same our ears will be deaf to it but for the children whose words, unformed, cannot support you. When you fade into the horizon for the last time like a mirage, the only water will be in your canteen, your blood, your vital fluids and my tears as I recognise this for what it is. But tears are undrinkable and I am a shark that has stopped swimming.