IN a wasteland; flowers It was a lake once. I knew by the way the earth peeled and cracked like so many shattered clay jars in every direction. Years ago the rain vanished, and now dust settled ashen in my nose and mouth when the wind blew. I wandered mile after mile, and for years the barrenness of the landscape and the hollowness behind my ribs were all I knew. There was an emptiness in me deeper than my body's hunger. Perhaps if I wandered long enough something might fill the deep ache. Every long while, a shape would appear on the far horizon. As it flickered in the heat, I would imagine it was a house or a town. Another person. Each time I was certain that this is what I’d been searching for, this would be a place to call home. In desperation I would run until my breath tore ragged within me. And each time I eventually saw the form for what it was: just a cactus whose spines drew blood or a heap of bones that crumbled and blew away in the wind. The sun set, the daylight faded, and again I found myself alone. One such night, I had a dream. I sat in the shade of a magnificent tree. The branches above rose and fell, and my skin thrilled with a warm, breezy sort of aliveness. As I looked off down the ridge, I saw more water than I had ever known—a creek. When I turned back, a man sat across from me in sandals and traveling clothes. Despite his worn appearance, the kindness in his eyes made it difficult to look away. The same current of aliveness I had noticed at first felt wider and deeper and clearer the more I looked at him. A sensation rose up deep inside me that, somehow, he was the very source of it. For a long while, we sat. I didn’t know what to say, only that I very much wanted to be near him there in the dew and the forest and the cool of the morning. He studied me with intention and I noticed a tenderness in his search. After hours—or only minutes—he reached out, as if to touch my face. His hand slowed for a moment, suspended, as he looked me in the eyes. With a start, I awoke. Once again I found myself shivering on the ground as the air whistled around me. Alone. A carefully built wall of apathy within shook, and then crumbled. For the first time in all my wandering years, I felt that I was alone. The fresh pain of it tore my breath from me. I pounded my fists into the ground, choking as dust rose around me. I screamed again and again into the darkness. Alone. My hands bled and the hollow cries echoed until the wind swept them further into the desert. I kept pounding. Alone. When I could hardly raise my arms I sank to the ground, exhausted. I tried to recall the cool morning and the man in his sandals and traveling clothes, but the memory only served to make the night darker. How could I resign myself to life in this wasteland? How could I accept the darkness and the drought? All the wandering years, all the emptiness and thirst I’d assumed were life? I closed my eyes-- they were no more than dust. I sank into a half sleep, exhausted. Hours later, a suggestion of light revealed the far horizon. I blinked awake. And there in the dimmest light of the sun, I saw a man. He was far, far away but again some deep and unexplored part of myself felt strangely awake. I told myself he was a mirage—a shred of my dream lost in the wind, intruding on a reality I knew was only sand for miles. But even as my mind resisted, my body stood up. Against the howling wind, I began to walk. Miles later, I knew it was him. It had to be. He wore the same sandals and traveling clothes and from him came that same sense of aliveness I remembered from the dream. Saying nothing, he produced a jar of water from his traveling bag and held it out. In my curiosity I’d nearly forgotten my usual thirst. I sipped slowly at first but, as he nodded permission, I emptied it in desperate gulps. I returned the jar and looked down at my feet. Then he spoke. “Where are you from?” His simple question caught me off guard. Being from somewhere. A home. I realized there were only faint echoes where my early memories should have been. I saw the dry lakebed and the black, starless nights. And before that, nothing. A lake. There had been a lake once. Were there other people? People, there must hav—and again, blackness. I groped for something, anything. He tried again. “Well, what’s your name?” More blackness. I didn’t know. I looked away and whispered the only word I could think of. “Dust.” His face softened. He gently pulled on my wrist and held my bruised hand out between us. I risked a look at him, but he was gazing down, brushing dust from where it clung to my dirty, bleeding fingers. His hands were gentle, as if he held a fragile desert flower. As if he'd never seen such beauty. “My name is Jesus.” He said simply. “And yours isn’t dust.” Then he took my shoulders and turned me so we faced the barren landscape I’d walked all morning. “You look nothing like it.” He stepped back for a moment and I stood alone, taking in the desert I had wandered. Great clouds of sand swept across its cracked surface. There was not a living being in sight. But as I stood, a wind I’d never known swelled from behind me. It was cool and expectant, heavy with dew and the scent of moss. It played among the rags I wore, in my hair, and washed the dirt from my skin in gentle waves. For the first time I could remember, I felt clean. When I finally turned around, the dry and infinite horizon was gone. In its place was a rich forest that rose and fell, as if stirred by a deep and gentle heartbeat. It hummed with life, and I could see a path leading into the cool shade. The man called Jesus stood before me, waiting. “Who am I?” I whispered, looking up at him. He smiled, then held out his hand. I looked back at the heat and the endless horizon behind me one final time, then took it. He led me the last few steps toward the cool shade, then paused for a moment and looked down at me. “You ready?” I nodded. He smiled and held out the jar I had drained earlier. It was full.
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ABOUT...Writer/social worker/(seriously) amateur baker out of Minneapolis, MN. Archives
June 2017
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