Curandera

They think she lives alone on the edge of town in a two-room house where she moved when her husband died at thirty-five of a gunshot wound in the bed of another woman. The curandera and house have aged together to the rhythm of the desert. She wakes early, lights candles before her sacred statues, brews tea of yerbabuena. She moves down her porch steps, rubs cool morning sand into her hands, into her arms. Like a large black bird, she feeds on the desert, gathering herbs for her basket. Her days are slow, days of grinding dried snake into powder, of crushing wild bees to mix with white wine. And the townspeople come, hoping to be touched by her ointments, her hands, her prayers, her eyes. She listens to their stories, and she listens to the desert, always, to the desert. By sunset she is tired. The wind strokes the strands of long gray hair, the smell of drying plants drifts into her blood, the sun seeps into her bones. She dozes on her back porch. Rocking, rocking.