Salt Flats at Dusk

The crust of the salt flat holds its breath beneath a sky gone copper and bone. No shadow dares stretch that far.

A woman walks the white without leaving prints, as if the land has already memorized every passage, every turning back.

Miles out, a truck idles on the highway edge, its headlights not yet needed, a small commitment to the dark still coming.

She stops. Kneels. Presses a palm to the mineral skin of the earth and feels the cold rise through the whole of her.

Evening arrives not as darkness but as the slow erasure of color— the world going quiet in a language older than thirst.