Under A Blue Sky

The thing I always want to ask is this.

“Where did you think you were going?”

I bring them out here then wait for it to happen.

It’s as if they’ve never thought about it, not until they’re standing in the middle of it.

The desert is a big place.

So big it gets inside you. Because it’s not just big. It feels big.

Expansive.

There was a guy used that very word once, like he’d practiced it. Envisaged standing under a blue sky, declaring how expansive it was. Big wasn’t good enough for him.

But even he dissolved.

Because the thing is, in the glare of the afternoon sun, it’s the white that gets you.

The light.

It shrinks perspectives.

And when you squint into the distance, all you catch is a shimmering on the horizon. A vague sense that there are things there, just beyond your reach, just beyond your gaze, that you can only feel.

Under A Blue Sky

All things a Fata Morgana.

I’ve seen people disintegrate at that moment. Reach out and touch the person beside them, just to confirm their own presence.

We drive back in silence, careening down the highway towards the city and its multi-coloured light. Towards a dazzle that soothes us and lies to us. And we stare at it wide-eyed and welcome it.

But I have stood in the desert some days, alone under the sky, knowing it is the white light that contains everything.

And in the distance, the city is just a mirage. I take pot shots at it and listen as the bullets crack the air.

Pop. And all is gone.