Words of Acadiana

  Missing the desert is like missing a limb. The body remembers what the mind tries to forget—the weight of the sun on your shoulders, the dry whisper of wind that coats your skin in dust so fine it feels like memory itself. Even after you leave, the desert lingers. It clings to your pores, to the corners of your mind, to the ache behind your ribs that flares like phantom pain when the air grows too damp, too full of noise. There is a silence in the desert that becomes a part of you. It moves beneath your skin, a pulse that syncs with the stillness of distant mesas and the soft hum of power lines vibrating under a wide, indifferent sky. When you’re gone, the absence hums louder than the place ever did. It’s a ghost—warm and hollow at once. Only the lonely understand this kind of missing. The kind that has no face, no end. The desert was never meant to love you back, yet you crave its cold nights and cruel light, the way it stripped you bare until you were nothing but nerve and dust...

  “Motel 6, Alamogordo” The super moon is swollen tonight— a silver heart beating above the gypsum dunes, casting milklight on the parking lot where moths tremble against the neon vacancy sign. In Room 112, the tub fills slow, water whispering like a secret I once told the stars. Tequila hums soft beneath my ribs, a low electric murmur— heat loosening the borders between body and sky. The desert breathes through the thin motel curtains, cool and mineral, carrying the sound of trains, coyotes, and some ancient song older than prayer. I close my eyes and drift. The tile floor hums with portals— tiny vortexes opening beneath my skin, memories slipping through the cracks of time. Somewhere, I’m barefoot on white sand, calling out to no one. Somewhere, the moon answers back in a voice that tastes like salt and smoke. I am the siren of this roadside night, singing to the Western wind— half love, half haunting. Every mile I’ve ever driven echoes in the hollow of my chest. And the moon—my ...

  A Farewell Spell for Marfa There’s a certain kind of dusk that only belongs to Marfa—the kind where the light bleeds slow, like a wound refusing to close. Dust rises from the road in amber halos, and the air hums with that strange, invisible electricity that’s neither joy nor sorrow, but something in between. Out here, endings don’t announce themselves; they just drift in on the wind, quiet as tumbleweed shadows. The desert feels hollow tonight. The motel signs buzz faintly, the horizon wears its bruise of burnt pink and violet, and the ghosts of all my former selves wander the edges of town, whispering promises they couldn’t keep. Even the wind sounds different—less like a song, more like a sigh. Marfa was once a kind of spell for me. The wide, merciless sky taught me surrender. The desert dust buried my noise, my need to belong. There were nights when I swore I could feel the old witches stirring under the mesquite—old souls who taught me that solitude is its own kind of prayer...