Salt Flat at Dusk

The salt flat holds the last light like a wound holds heat — white and absolute, unbothered by the mountains going purple at its edge.

I drove here to be no one. The car ticks as it cools. A hawk carves something patient into the bleached and stalling air.

What the desert knows it keeps in crystals: every lake that came and went, each century of thirst pressed flat.

I leave a footprint that will last until the next rain, which is to say possibly forever, or Tuesday — the desert not distinguishing.

Driving back I watch the salt shrink in the mirror, that bright unreadable page receding into what I've already forgotten.