when you’re lost in a desert, it’s important to collect your urine and any other liquid you produce to distill into drinking water using a tarp and two coffee cans. most people, when getting lost, forget to bring the tarp and the coffee cans, so their urine is useless, their tears worse than useless, yet they continue to produce both and watch the tiny rivulets swallowed in seconds by parched and crackling dirt. for the desert, all your plump and watered hopes are just a drop on the tongue.

when the desert is lost in you, it sends out flags to other deserts. hard crusts of dry skin form along your outer ridges. your moisturizer fails. people start to steer clear of you, afraid you will “suck them dry.” only other desert people wander near, the ones who are further along than you. they wear their deserts on the outside. wrapped head to toe like mummies in baroque tatters, moving their sandpaper lips in crass imitation of language. we know you, they insist. we’re here for you.

[re-blogged]