My sand worn skin stings in the harsh afternoon light. My chapped lips bleed and the taste of metal fills my dry mouth. We've reached the heart of this place and at it's heart lay it's cruelest intent. The desert harbors a hatred for all living and moist, "How dare you intrude," she threatens me through whispers of whipped air. She understands that in this place I am but a stranger, a fish out of water. Water... water is what I lack, water is what I crave yet water is what is nowhere (in my sight, well, that's not entirely correct) to be found. I find myself stumbling across my words quite often nowadays. Another falsity presents itself to my starving eyes, how my eyes deceive me. At this point the temptation to tear them out nags again at that dark morbid recess in my mind for these illusions are becoming quite difficult to bear. Oasis waters creep up to my feet only to quickly retreat when any hint of joy presents itself to my frail mind. These eyes are a curse. No, it is this desert that curses me in all her bitter wrath. I have reached her heart, the end is nowhere in sight, yet I await the night when stars will glitter above and sweet sagittarius will smile upon me, assuredly cooing, "Darling, you've come so far! The direction which you seek is the path you now tread. Go on, my love, go on! Soon the desert's cruelty will cease and shall give way to kinder days. She hides me in the light, she does, but I am here despite her clever tricks." I cannot help but smile. Dear archer, how you've followed me through bog and plain and mountain alike, I cannot help but love you. I cannot help but reach you, my heart touches the sky. Hope, hope is what I've lacked.

A cool breeze blows across my tired back and I come to my senses. I've sunken to my knees, at which point I am not sure but my skin is red and angry and I curse the ground shells and mountains that lay under my feet.

"We are all reduced to ash, in the end." I breathe. I no longer recognize the voice I hear as my own. Too deep, too cracked, too soft. No, once my voice was small yet bold and girlish, perhaps, though I cannot say. I once spoke with flowered words and had an elegant grace yet that has come to what? I am no longer sure. The past fades behind me much like trailed ribbon in a wind too strong. I once saw a small girl in Central Park carrying a red balloon, a lone red orb that caught the light in the early afternoon through the shade and filtered glitter of trees. She wandered from her mother and I watched, simply watched. Then I could simply watch from a hidden vantage point set among the shady trees and upon a cool bench I sat, yes, I remember now. It was cold and hard and devoid of true comfort for my skin sank at gravity's pull between the metal rods. This image I've conjured only brings to light the vast emptiness in which I now exist, how have I gotten here? How is it that I, like that red balloon, have floated so far from a young girls hands who valued her prize so highly and held on so tightly and found only that her grip was not as tight as she'd been so sure. My grip was not tight enough and I feel my life, the one I was, the one I knew, slipping quickly through my fingers like the sands that now surround me. I have been ground down like a mountain and dried up like a once vast sea and I, whoever I was and now claim to be am now devoid of identity in this place, for no cacti nor any rock will dare to whisper my phantom name. What good is a name when you are left with nothing but yourself, your thoughts, your desperation and frail nature? What good is beauty, what good is charm when you are left to face the sands of time against a cruel sun and ungiving wind?

What good is love?

Love... yes, love I do remember. Love has placed me here, I am now sure of it, and it is for love that I continue on. It is for you. For although time grinds and tears and rips at the face of what we hold to be so dear, love endures for love is a product not of this earth, not of this body nor of this cruel unfaltering desert. I remember love for I remember you.

I feel a small drop fall down my cheek and burn my lips and I taste salt. The cloth that I've wrapped about my head slips down my eyes as my head bows and I laugh. What reason do I have to laugh? Yet I convulse under the feeling and am quite sure I must at last have found death. The utterances tear at my throat yet I do not attempt to abate them. Darkness surrounds my eyes and I slip, into what remains to be seen.