Friday, April 17, 2026

Day 16: Joshua Tree

Can't touch those Joshua trees
Those spiny trunks, desert daggers
That need a freeze before they bloom.
Can't slap an age on them without growth rings

The clouds rolled overhead easily
Casting shadows a mile wide
The boulders stacked themselves precariously
Like they could crush you any moment

It's customary to offer guests a beverage,
But she knows better than to be a good host

The desert's a better woman than me
She doesn't peacock for nothing
Just stretches out, rolls, yawns, grants permission
To be anything but young and fertile
To be ancient, vast, unknowable

To be the worst kind of woman,
The unsmiling kind, dry and unapologetic
A drought of a woman, inhospitable
An ungracious desert of a woman
She told me I could be the free like her

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