I want to travel the desolate lands of the heart,
enter red places where nothing else grows,
where there is nowhere for either of us to hide,
some vast, unmapped space where we cannot
know what we will do next. There are canyons there
forged by currents of tears so old we no longer
remember their source. We could walk
to the canyon’s edges, stand at the cliffs,
drop our names and stories into the abyss.
What would be left of us to watch the sun setting
beyond the horizon, the sky changing from red
to blue before the irregular moons begin to rise,
one quick and bright, the other ghostly and slow?
In the midst of such barrenness, would we finally
trust just how lush, how exotic, how feral and fecund
this chance we’ve been given to be alive, to love?