i've never been to a desert before. but it must be the silence there, not the scorching heat, that terrorizes people. unending stretch of silent sand broken only by a clump of dried bones here, there, a bush of mute mesquite.
last night, i listened to L's message over and over. i still don't get him. his rambling, so spare. i fear the spartanness of his valedictory.
at one point, i was convinced i got him. but, i'm not so certain now. i thought he talked about my cavalier disregard of other people's emotions. L, being L, could not bring himself to use the word heart.
in a willa cather's novel, a frontier girl, realizing for the first time how the country meant to her, believed her heart belonged together with the other things that buzz and croon out there in the sand.
i am gripped by fear of this silence between L and i. the cultivated silence of a buzzard, circling above, before swooping down on a furry ball too late to lunge back into its dusty hole.
