DAY 11

She found finally a tiny green  leaf that cracked when she touched it. Beyond that there was nothing: the distant sky, arching dunes, white on white scratched with low scrub that rustled in the winds that came and went.         And the promise and pathos of that useless encounter — refusing to die, refusing to speak! — suddenly drew about itself the few memories left to her, memories blinded by sun.        And she walked through arches of burned air and great patios of cracked blood rose from the dust.       And wherever she set her foot the silent pulse of the sand commanded her eyes.        To the left, she multiplied; to the right, she multiplied.        When she swallowed a thousand and ten thousand more of her swallowed; when she sighed, the collective breath shimmered in thin quick vapor.        When she wet the pith of her lips with the tip of her tongue great carbon mirrors shattered through each arduous thought.

And the slow cacophony strove through her to the echo of deft impalements.        And from the cinderous wrack of minute crepuscular cyclones, she heard, hidden anguish, the guttural groan of her name ...        As if the butchered light, in strips of crushed hemorrhage ...          white on white, the arching dunes ...        ... when she touched it ....

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