Salt Flats at Low Season

The white plain holds no shadow. Whatever passed here left its outline in mineral, in the slow geometry of thirst.

A crow drops from nowhere into nowhere. The air doesn't move to receive it, only watches the way water once did— flat, without hunger.

I drove here thinking the emptiness would answer something I'd been asking. It didn't. It was only what it was: a surface that had given everything up and kept going.

Somewhere beneath the crust the old lake remembers its pressure, its cold weight, the shapes it made of reeds and fish and light. Nothing returns. The knowing stays.

I turned the car around at dusk when the flats went pink and brief. The road back was the same road. I was glad for the signs, for the particular names of towns.