Cactus Joe’s Nursery, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Visited on June 25, 2022.
She contemplates the pile of blue rainbow glass.
She chooses a rock from the pile.
She holds it. She puts it down.
She chooses a different rock.
She holds it. She puts it down.
She chooses a different rock.
A feeling now this rock now they belong to one another.
Surrounded by the material to fashion desert landscapes.
Mounds of rainbow glass, rows of artificial sunflowers, stone benches.
We pass the succulents in formation.
On the head of a young cactus, a tuft of white hair.
Touch me and I’ll hurt you, the cactus squeaks.
Decorations you provoke a lament I have no home to situate you.
Joshua tree: headache worn down hungover otherwise fine.
Blotched lizard the color of shade under a bench.
I enter the labyrinth, finally, shadows with me.
We are heedful of our time here.
I am reluctant to walk too slow or too fast in case I remember something.
I am afraid to hear myself speak to myself but that’s why I came.
I am afraid this is a waste of time, that I will hear nothing at all.
When you reach the center, what do you encounter?
Reality: nowhere left to go the way you came.
On the way out, express your lamentations over what’s manifest unmanifest.
I am tempted to take short cuts, step over the rocks, which are outlines not borders.
I’m usually desperate to hear something but not today.
Today I soak in the sun. I draw from the water in my reserve.
This circumspect feeling toward feeling is like breathing, surpassing all my expectations.
Near the labyrinth, a chapel, doors locked.
A wedding venue, hungry for prayers.
A labyrinth is a net, a fishbowl.
We are each to another, even after.