parched raze winter's waning moisture conspires with whatever scrap of stolen sleep i'm missing most to fill my throat with sand. not that i have any words to sing. but if i did, there would be more grit than gristle now between the meat of each note. 221123 ... ovenbird Recirculated air sucks the moisture from my eyes, replacing it with salt and sand. A painful itch lurches across my ocular surface, eventually hunkering down in a tear duct where it lights a fire for warmth. My lashes are cloaked in smoke and ashes. My eye sockets are a dry riverbed. There are snakes sunning themselves on the exposed rocks. Their tails whip across my field of vision, scales scraping sclera. This is all there will be one day, when the water inside me recedes. Whatever I am will find desiccated stillness, will become fractured shale, sharp under the untested feet of the future. 250722 what's it to you? who go blather from