Desert Wind

Eat your heart.

Her voice was a whisper. Yet I heard every word in my bones. The desert winds were cold, but my skin longed for cool. The sun punished me for being in this place that was not mine. The sand, though, didn't change.

She arrived like the wind.

A woman, riding the back of the desert's breath. She danced over the dunes, ruled them, knew the bones they buried. My eyes followed as sand ate and bore her again. And in what felt like hours for me, but nothing to the desert, she stood beside me.

I saw her face.
We both knew.

Eat your heart.

I can’t.

My heart pounded in my chest. It pumped too much blood, as if it were trying to beat as much as possible before I ate it.

Please let me go.

I hoped she'd leave. I would not fear a ghost, but she was more. A demon of the desert.

Her nose would have touched mine if she had had one. I smelled the mold in her breath—rot of the centuries. The sockets of her eyes stared down at me, and I felt like a scorpion that hid before the sun.

You have no choice. You poisoned it. It doesn't serve you anymore.

What I buried rose again. Nothing can be undone in life. Nothing rots in peace. I am a beast, as a beast I die. How must she find me in this desert, when I expected nothing—only stars and silence?

For centuries, she heard no laughter, but today she would have moved her mouth. My struggle must be flowers in this dead land to her. How many others did she show her mirror to? How many despaired under her words? She must know how to drown even the strongest in the desert.

I could no longer bear her gaze. Oh, sand—may I vanish in you? I want to become a crystal in your ocean of dust.

Her dry fingers touched my chest, gently, and I understood my fate. My flesh opened almost without noise, as if she painted it away. The breeze cooled my fear. I was weary. The sleep of aeons called me home. My bones unlocked to the stars with a silent click.

There it was, my heart. Pulsing. Pounding. I squatted upon the ground, looked at what no man should see. She joined me. Her cold knees against mine. Together, we looked at my heart, tar-black and trembling.

Eat it now. It is time.

I slowly took my heart in both hands and lifted it out of my chest. I heard the screams from far away. No mercy. A small bite.

How does it taste, my friend?

It is bitter.
Bitter.

Written with my favorite poem in mind.