Spring 2012 Stylus

I tossed the stupid paper in the recycling bin, erasing it from my thoughts. I was careful to tiptoe around her, pulling the cloth back from where it hung over my shelf bed. Shima moaned softly, “Don’t leave.” I crawled into my bed and tried to whisper “I won’t,” but it didn’t come out, so I just lay there for while—drifting in and out of sleep. Drifting across the desert, into the wind blowing through the grates on Badu’s screen porch and right into her eyes. I slid beneath them.

A howl penetrated the quiet night sky, and I jolted awake. My heart choked my throat with its pounding. I stumbled out of bed onto the hearth. It was late. The night was a deep purple and navy encasing the small home in its arms. Shima and Sicheii had already gone to bed. I fumbled around, light-headed. What had I seen in my dream? There were only glimpses of colors, feet on earth and silvery slinking shadows. Also, there was that feeling, that pounding feeling in my soul. The same I had felt in the rain all those years ago. It had jumped to my throat and escaped out my mouth when I awoke. I grabbed a cup of cold soup off the table where Shima had left it, but I could hardly swallow it down. “AOUUUUU,” the howl broke the night again, but the fracture was soon filled with laughter.

Grabbing a blanket, I slipped outside into the night and silently joined the group of excited teenagers teeming with some repressed spirit. The desert always got cold at night. Nothing to hold the heat.

Nothing to make it stay. The moon shone down quietly. Her light gently brushed the mountains in the distance, shading them into silent stalking guardians. I watched her, suspended there, alone. The stars were lost in the magnitude of her light. Yet, in all her glory, reflecting across the whole wide dessert, she seemed so vulnerable. I imagined she dangled there by only a thread as if she were aware of some precariousness associated with her role—caught between two barren seas.

“Mia, Mia, always serious,” teased Niyol as he slung his arm around my shoulders leaning his weight against mine. “Loosen up.

It’s nighttime, the moon is full. How does that ancient creation story go?” He took a puff of a cigarette and blew the smoke towards the moon in salute. “There must be something wild in it. You know all the stories. Tell me a story, Mia.” He flicked the cigarette butt to the ground and took a swig from the deerskin flask he was carrying.

“Only coyote is wild. He throws the stars into the air before the people are ready,” I said quietly, feeling unsettled. He howled again, taking a second swig and breathing in the night air.

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