forty_nights ovenbird I’m lost in a dreamless desert. I used to surface from sleep with subconscious runnels pooling in my open hands. I used to wake to whispers and wisps of stories still wet with afterbirth. I used to carry the lightning of my sleeping mind into the day and use it as a source of energy for my conscious imagination. Now I wake only with the sense that I have been in a place devoid of living things—a wasteland—hot sun, hot sand, hot wind in my face; a vague image of a temporary work camp, modular buildings spread out over a featureless expanse of dust without even the rise of a dune to break up the flat landscape. I grasp at the feeling that something is there beyond the blazing sky, but nothing steps over the horizon, no darting skink or meandering tortoise, nothing carrying a glint of mischievous delight in its dark eye. I wake bereft, deprived of something I can’t control, punished for crimes I can’t recall committing. I am an exile from myself. If I wander for forty days and forty nights will I hear the voice of god? Or will I die at the edge of a shimmering mirage, trying to bring the illusion of moisture to my cracked and peeling lips? 260814 what's it to you? who go blather from