Salt Flat at Dusk

The salt flat holds the sky like a second sky, both of them emptying into the other, and you walk the seam between two silences.

Your shadow stretches west into the pink hour, thin as a needle threading the horizon, stitching you to something you can't name.

Here the wind has no cause, only direction. It moves through you the way water moves through sand — not carrying, not staying, just passing through.

The crust gives slightly underfoot, a breath held in mineral patience since the inland sea withdrew and left its white bones to remember the tide.

Night arrives without announcement. The first stars appear in the mirror below your feet before they appear above — as if the earth has always known them better.