<\/p>\n
Forever Yours<\/b><\/p>\n
He trudged into the desert, taking almost
\n\tnothing with him but water and a ghost-
\n\tly old photo
\n\tof a lady beside the ocean.
\n\tThat first night,
\n\the lay above a dry creek bed. Below,
\n\the heard vipers moving through the sand
\n\twith a side-winding motion,
\n\tand
\n\the did not sleep.
\n\tHe\u2019d grown obsessed with the notion
\n\tof walking deep
\n\tand deeper into the wilderness. By
\n\tthe third day, his lips were swollen and dry.
\n\tNow he was completely isolated,
\n\tsurrounded by a desert that dominated
\n\twith its glittering sand
\n\tand
\n\tnot high above, a sky so huge and blue
\n\tthat it scared him to look too long upon.
\n\tThere was nothing new
\n\tnow under his sun. By now, his water was gone.
\n\tDay five, he quit moving altogether
\n\tand sat instead for hours, with his photo and leather
\n\tflask, coughing in the cool valley of a dune,
\n\twatching the daytime moon,
\n\tgibbous and gorged, roll by like an eroded stone.
\n\tThe sky was biblical. The sun was white as bone.
\n\tFinally, on the evening of his sixth day,
\n\twhen his strength had all but slipped away,
\n\ta willowy woman in a white dress appeared.
\n\tShe had long black hair, which stirred in the xeric
\n\tair, and though his eyes were watery and bleared,
\n\the knew for certain who it was. And so
\n\tit was that she beckoned him. He rose, sure but slow,
\n\tup from the ferric
\n\tand rust-colored sand,
\n\tas if this is what he\u2019d been waiting for all
\n\talong. And,
\n\tleaving his shoes and other belongings
\n\tbehind, he followed her into
\n\tthe drifted dunes, beneath a sky of melting blue.
\n\tAnd that was it. Days later when they found his things,
\n\tthey saw the photo half-buried in the sand.
\n\tIt was a black-and-white of a black-
\n\thaired woman, very elegant, tall,
\n\twhose short life,
\n\ttwo years back,
\n\thad been eaten away in a strange
\n\tPatagonian land, below a mountain range.
\n\tThat woman was his wife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Forever Yours He trudged into the desert, taking almost nothing with him but water and a ghost- ly old photo of a lady beside the ocean. That first night, he lay above a dry creek bed. Below, he heard vipers moving through the sand with a side-winding motion, and he did not sleep. He\u2019d grown … <\/p>\n