Salt Flats at Dusk

The flats hold the sky like a mirror that has forgotten what it once reflected — salt and quartz in equal patience, the horizon a seam no one has thought to open.

A crow lands at the edge of the white. Its feet make no sound. It stays, as things that know waiting stays, until the light decides.

The mountains at dusk become suggestion, mauve ideas of themselves behind the haze. Only their shadows travel to us, thin and faithful as old letters.

I walked here once when I was still learning to want less. The ground gave nothing, and I was grateful — even emptiness has its own kind of weather.

Now the first stars breach the east. The crow has gone where crows go. The salt receives the dark the way the body receives sleep — without argument.