The Geometry of Thirst

The salt flat holds nothing back— every crack a map of what was water, white as the inside of a closed eye.

You walk out onto it and the horizon doubles itself in the crust below, sky pressed against sky like palms.

A crow lands once, considers, lifts again without leaving a mark. Even weight forgets itself here.

Somewhere the lake still exists as the memory of its own pressure— a hollow in the rock's long dreaming,

waiting for the kind of rain that knows where it is going, that does not apologize for arriving.