• Vol. 05
  • Chapter 12
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Nothing else but alone

I lie here, in the ear of the canyon,
facing heavenward, while tarantulas,
scorpions and sandbugs step over me, careful
as though hurrying home with their shopping,
as though I were roadkill or a sleeping cat.

A helicopter thrummed by, hours ago,
and I called out, but the walls held my cries
repeating them back to me, childish.
It wanted me, all to itself.

No other hikers came, no searchers
claimed my name, only my breath
ragged and trapped, echoed around me,
my legs squelched by the crafty loose rock,
that had plummeted for just

a hundredth of a second,
leaving my pelvis in an unexpected
million pieces.

Now the numbness inches up,
and my rest is silent,
nothing disturbs my cradle.

The sky above glows like a star-spit river
winding through the carved rocks
flittering and inviting.

1

Nothing else but alone

It is lucky
that I am nowhere else but here,
nothing else but alone
in the severe and loving curves
of Mother Earth.

2