Dreams. Strange Dreams …
I hear a child’s footsteps running through deep sand. The pace is halting, erratic, as if the child turns frequently to look over his shoulder.
I see the grains sink beneath his weight as he approaches.
Sand blows.
But there is no child.
There is only blood red sunlight falling through gaps in the clouds.
The steps run up to me, and I reach out, desperate to touch him.
But my hands find air.
Cold. Unbearably red.
My wife … my former wife … told me that when a child dies, somewhere in the world, the desert grows. The sand takes another step.
From the moment of my young son’s death, the sand has been walking in my heart. Relentless. Tramping out every spark of life that dares to flicker.
The more I struggle against the sand, the stronger it grows, sucking me down into some unfathomable darkness that lives in my heart.
Gods, I miss my son.
And my wife.
It makes it harder that she is alive, breathing, her heart beating.
Even worse …
I know that somewhere in the terrible smothering darkness lies a well of strength.
But to find it I will have to leap into the abyss, and gaze nakedly upon the darkness.
What a coward I am.
A broken miserable coward.
So …
All day, every day, the desert walks in me.
And I walk in the desert.