Dia de Los Muertos

 The desert does not forgive,

but it remembers.
Beneath its skin,
his ancestors wait—
bones pressed into dust,
names swallowed by wind.

He lights a cigarette,
draws them in,
each breath an altar flame,
each exhale a release
into the ether.
The smoke hangs in the air
like marigold petals scattered
on Día de los Muertos—
bright offerings in a land
that has forgotten color.

Sweat runs down his brow,
a rosary of salt,
each bead a prayer
to the ones who came before.
No candles, no sugar skulls,
no music of remembrance—
only the desert’s vast silence,
and the grit of a man
who chooses loneliness
as communion.

He will not leave the ghosts behind.
He forgives the past,
but not enough to let it go.
Here, where the living rarely linger,
he walks with the dead
and calls it a pilgrimage.
The desert becomes his altar,
the smoke his incense,
his footsteps the prayer.