The Desert Never Forgets

 At the crossroads where the desert

splits itself like a wound, I sat. 
I found a dive bar flickering
under neon bones of red and blue,
a last-chance lantern for the lost.

Inside, country music bled slow
from a cracked jukebox,
steel guitar crying like a ghost
that still remembered my name.
Cigarette smoke curled
into grey serpents above the bar,
hissing secrets only the midnight
and the damned could decipher.

I drank whiskey-bent lies
straight from the bottle—
truth tasted too clean for a night like this.
The bartender’s eyes were moons of their own,
half-lit, half-shadowed,
seeing more than he ever dared speak aloud.

Outside, the full moon hung heavy,
round as an omen, bright as a spell,
pulling at the sand, the blood,
at every crossroads choice I’d buried
under years of wandering.

A gust rose from the west—
warm, wicked, whispering—
and I felt the desert stir,
a witch’s hand brushing my spine,
reminding me that magic lives
in moments like these:
one foot in the life you’ve lived,
one foot in the future you count on.

By morning, I was nothing
but a tumbleweed soul,
light enough to roll,
untethered enough to finally listen
to the wind calling my name—
a promise, a warning,
a spell breaking open at dawn.

And I moved.
Because crossroads don’t wait,
and the desert never forgets
who you were
when the neon flickered
and the moon demanded truth.