Deserting

V- Khuri

Sunrise in the sand dunes, camel-bell wandering tunes and campfire chai, we slept under the sky, a speckling of freckles from light years away. It’s the human way to start the day, when the sun rises high and the bag gets too hot to lie in any more. I don’t remember much about last night- eating daal fry and chapatti with my fingers in the firelight, drawing country flags in the sand with a stick which graduated to explicit sexual scenes which, in turn, collapsed into laughter. Dozing off bundled in under the planetarium sky; me a sleeping snow-globe dweller under a blizzard of stars, shook up every time I opened my eyes. A new blizzard every time. The sand was hard and I awoke often to give one side of my bones a break, and I would gaze, half-sleeping, at that rain of stars above me, that desert of open space so outmatching my meager dunes. And I slept soundly. Light snores. Insignificant reverberations.