Words of Acadiana

 The desert is my dancefloor  The wind keeps time  The grasses bend at the waist  Creosote shivers in the rhythm  Even the mountains move  The sun hangs overhead  Like a mirror ball  Throwing pieces of itself  Across the earth  At fifty-three  I close my eyes  And I am twenty again  Somewhere in New Orleans  Music moving through my body Before I knew what freedom meant  Dance music saved me  There were things  I could only confess  On a dancefloor  Here  I confess them to the wind  It takes everything  My grief  My joy  My wanting  The names I no longer need  And carries it somewhere  I can not see  Perhaps they land  On another planet  Perhaps they become  Something alive  Perhaps there are millions  Of versions of me  Dancing somewhere  In the dark  Under the suns  Inside other galaxies  Still movi...

 Navajo crosses  Call to me in the moonlight  I smoke myself past midnight  And drink whiskey  Until my throat remembers fire  Santa Fe is asleep  The Sangre de Cristos Watch without speaking  I say his name  Once  And let the wind take it  I can not tell If I am cursed  Or cursing him  Two ghost horses  Pull against the dark  One toward him  One away  Then  One breaks free  And the mountains keep the secret  Like they always do 

 Navajo crosses  in the dark  Lonely road  Small flames  against the desert  I sit alone  in the night wind  and smoke  Santa Fe  is spread below me  a handful of lights  caught in the valley  The Sangre de Cristos  keep their silence  They have seen  what men do  with love  Whiskey leaves  its warmth in my throat  a slow burning  after the swallow  I think of him  Love did not make it  Neither did we  There were throat punches  Bruises  Words we carried Like stones in our pockets  Still  I loved him  god I loved him  Some nights  I think I might live through it  Some nights  I think I might not  The cigarette burns  between my fingers  Smoke rises  and disappears  into the black  I envy it  to become nothing  so easily  Beyond the city  the mountains stand  with th...

 After death  I learned there was no reason  to be afraid  The distance between us was only a door  a road  a little weather  we had mistaken for forever  When I was alive  I loved him in shadows  A shoulder against mine  in the dark  a hand lingering  too long at the doorway  His shirt on the chair  beside my bed  I took what love he gave me like a cigarette  held it between my fingers  watched it burn watched the smoke disappear  I thought there would be another  There wasn’t  Now I can walk beside him  without anyone seeing  I can say his name  without lowering my voice  I can stand beneath the enormous western sky  and admit the simple thing:  I love him  Until my last breath released  and then a little further  What a waste all those years  spent wanting  what was already ours  Fear was the only thing  that ever se...

 He found the shirt  behind the winter coats  creased at the sleeves  still holding the shape  of a man who was now just a ghost  For a moment  the whole room smelled of dust  and horses  and the long blue distance  between wanting  and having  He remembered the way  they stood beside each other  close enough to touch  afraid enough not to  Two men who could not fix it  so they learned to stand it the wanting  the ache  the heat of a body  remembered by another body He lifted the shirt  and laughed once  then almost cried  Outside the western sky  went on forever  Inside their two shirts  hung together  on one wooden hanger  sleeve over sleeve  two into one  He looked at them  until heartbreak  and happiness  became the same thing  Both burning down  through him  like whiskey. 

 In mountain footsteps  Desert Sky opens above  Strength borrowed from stone. 

 The desert keeps  Old agreements At night  I walk softly  There are currents here  That do not belong to the wind  The silence is listening  If I remain too long  It begins  To erase my edges  Morning lifts the veil  The mountains seem friendly again  And whatever was watching  Returns  To the earth 

 Even the sky gets tired of giving its all.  I relate. 

  Desert Dancefloor This morning I sit alone, watching the pulse of the desert rise with the sun. A rhythm reveals itself in the creosote, in the sparrows picking through gravel, in the shadows retreating toward the mountains. The earth has its own nightclub. No neon. No last call. Just heat gathering itself for another long set. It reminds me of New Orleans— rain-soaked nights, basslines rolling through my ribs, the dance floor crowded with ghosts wearing the faces of the living. Back then, I danced to outrun myself. Sweat erased the edges of old insecurities. The music made promises it could never keep. I know where the bodies are buried. Not in the literal sense. I mean the dreamers, the lovers, the beautiful wreckage of people who burned too brightly, who mistook the spark for the sun. Some are buried beneath memory. Some beneath regret. Some beneath songs I can no longer hear without stopping. Now the desert is my DJ. The ether spins invisible records. The wind scratches acros...

  I held your ashes in the desert. Not in a church. Not beneath stained glass. But under a white sun that had spent millions of years teaching stone how to disappear. The box was lighter than memory. I kept turning it over in my hands, trying to understand how thunder becomes dust. You were never dust to me. You arrived like monsoon clouds rolling over a thirsty basin. I craved you the way creosote craves rain— patiently, desperately, with roots reaching into places even I could not see. Your laugh shook loose entire seasons. And your touch— God. Your touch felt like galaxies colliding behind my ribs. Like stars dying and being born at the exact same moment. The universe was never silent when you placed your hand on my skin. Even now, holding what remains, I swear I can hear it. Not your voice. The echo. The afterglow. The sound of light still traveling through darkness long after its source is gone. The desert understood. Wind moved through the ocotillo. A raven crossed the sky. T...

  Found a vertebra in the desert today. White as the moon at noon, chalky against the red earth. Once it held a body upright. Once it moved beneath skin, beneath breath, beneath stars. Now it rests in silence, a small monument to the fierce briefness of things. Fragile, fragile, fragile. The sun presses down. The wind moves through creosote. An ancient ocean sleeps beneath my feet. Even the sand is made of what came before— shell, bone, mountain, memory. Tick, tock. The vertebra waits without concern. It has surrendered the question. What sense are we hoping it all makes? The lizard on the stone does not ask. The raven crossing the empty sky does not ask. The earth keeps turning through beauty and nonsense alike. Someday someone may find my vertebra, bleached beneath this same hard light. I hope what came before it was vivid. Not perfect. Not permanent. Vivid. A life of bright colors left in the rain. Watercolors running together at the edges. A canvas unable to hold the sky. The b...

 The sun here is not a star.  It is an instrument.  A blade.  A furnace door left open above the Chihuahuan Desert.  By noon  it has burned through every excuse. Every costume.  Every carefully rehearsed lie.  The heat strips this world to its skeleton.  It sterilizes. Purifies.  Reduces.  Until everything stands exposed in the harsh honesty of pure light.  The mesquite.  The mountains.  The man.  Nothing escapes.  The sun demands the truth. And it is patient.  Year after year it bleaches bone white.  Turns wood into driftwood.  Memory to dust.  Leaves skulls gleaming among the landscape . Like relics from an extinct religion.  Hollow.  White. Sacred.  As if holiness were simply  what remains  after false has burned past marrow.  Above me,  the sky is oceanic.  Impossibly blue.  So deep it feels swimmable.  As if I could dive upward  ...

  The heat gathers slowly here, not as an assault but as a presence— a warm, dry wind moving through creosote and mesquite, changing the energy like a sentinel taking its post at the edge of the day. Morning arrives turquoise, impossibly clean, the sky stretched wide above tan sand and distant mountains softened by light. The world still feels new to me, like a fever dream I haven't fully awakened from, every shape outlined with significance, every silence carrying weight. By noon, the desert has stripped itself bare. White bones lie bleaching in the sun, small monuments to surrender. Nothing is hidden. Nothing is wasted. Everything unnecessary burns away. The heat knows how to do this. It takes and takes until only truth remains. What you do with that truth is your own destiny. Sometimes I think of Georgia O'Keeffe— sepia-toned memories of a woman living her best life beneath these same skies, finding cathedrals in stone, finding eternity in bone and shadow, finding herself in...