Elsewhere by Gregory Lawless
Today, we climbed out of the desert, from a base of hard pan, up jags of rock.
On the other side we saw the low sweep of basin, studded with juniper,
and a few bushes in meek flower.
Beyond that, our city, curtained in smog.
In truth, I never thought about thirst.
And I never suffered a vision, though my friends claimed, many times,
to see some strange machine, aloft, over the horizon at night, darting
between stars.
They built fires to it, recited poems to it, and they talked, whenever
possible, about what I couldn't see.
It felt like forever. How each day I staggered through tent flaps to
conspiracies of dunes, and otherworldly weather, until even the broken
clay of my father's vineyards was no comfort to me.
Nor the raven cages and chained leopards in the markets, the hot
curses of the merchants.
Still, I can sleep. While, perhaps, an invisible vessel circles
above me, charting my dreams.
What it can make of those, I don't know.
But if it has come here from elsewhere, and if it plans to return
there, then it must go home with a story to tell.
Personally, I wish it well, sailing home, as it will, through illimitable sky.
And while I wonder if my dreams are valid cargo for such a trip, I
know from my travels that nothing real will help. Art by Annu Kilpeläinen
Recommended listening: Smooth Sailing - Queens of the Stone Age Moons of Neptune - The Machine
Links of the Day: Stranger Things GIF Creator Stranger Things Script + Transcript Smokeable Art Papermeal