Delicacy

Feathery whips of seeding grass bent in the breeze, delicately dragging her cheeks.

Her hand draped the stone colored reach of long dead mesquite now shading her legs still stretched across the ground into a green dusty unknown.  She heard the insects sizzle as if they were the sound of the sun threatening to devour everything. She thought of the animal and bent her neck across the dead tree in the direction it had bolted. She wondered if it had found water. She wondered if there was water to find. For hours, her eyes had scanned the height of the dancing grass for a landmark but the grass was too tall and now she only cared to ponder the scarred cactus figs standing at attention along the blades of the prickly pear. Nearly as red as her blood, they stoically awaited their fate, setting an example she was just now beginning to accept.

illustration Lindsey Jacobsen