Shadow and Flame

The sun carves you in half,
one side claimed by fire,
the other by shadow.

Your eyes tilt upward,
as if searching for a sign
etched in the sky,
as if the desert itself
might speak through the silence.

The turquoise on your chest
glows like water long vanished,
a prayer against thirst,
a relic of memory’s river.

You are not still—
you are listening,
to the slow turning of stone,
to the whisper of ancestors
who move in the heat shimmer
between worlds.

In this moment
you are both shadow and flame,
a sentinel of what endures.