Fever Dreams of Far West Texas

 Fever Dreams of Far West Texas

I live off cigarettes and sadness,
each drag a prayer to forgotten gods
who sleep beneath the mesas,
their dreams scattered like bones
bleaching in the open mouth of the sun.

The desert hums in burnt umber and terracotta,
its light gold and merciless,
sliding over flesh until I no longer know
where skin ends and the earth begins.
Dust rises like breath,
a spirit made visible,
and I swear it knows my name.

Smoke curls from my lips—
incense for ghosts that still linger,
whispering through the ocotillo and sage.
They speak in fevered winds,
in the hiss of sand against my boots,
in the ache between thunderclaps.

Ravens carve dark geometry into the sky,
their shadows falling across my face
like blessings or warnings.
They remember what I’ve forgotten—
the sacred hunger of solitude,
the soft hum of madness
that comes from listening too long
to the desert’s pulse.

Witches gather at the horizon’s edge,
their songs woven from dust and grief.
They tell me the storm is not a punishment
but a reckoning,
that lightning is a mirror
showing who I was before fire and sorrow
made a home in my chest.

Monsoonal clouds rise like bruises,
and I walk into their trembling light,
half man, half mirage,
guided by the echo of ancestors
and the shifting skin of the land.

Out here, every silence speaks,
every bone hums with memory.
The line between spirit and flesh
is thin as cigarette paper,
and when I exhale—
the smoke, the dust, the ache—
I almost believe
I was born from this place,
a ghost dreaming itself human
beneath an indifferent, golden sky.