Salt Flat at Noon

The white plain holds no shadows at this hour. Heat lifts off the crust in slow scrolls, and the horizon doubles itself in the shimmer like a word repeated until it loses meaning.

A raven crosses the distance without flapping. It threads the glare as though pulled by thread, growing no larger, arriving nowhere, until the sky swallows what the eye invented.

I set my hand flat on the salt and feel the stored warmth of mornings I missed— all that light the ground has been keeping patient as a held breath, patient as debt.

The mountain range is a rumor to the west. It turns a cool blue in the late-day haze, solid enough to walk toward for days and still find only sky where rock should be.