Saguaros

It was dusk for kilometers and bats in the lavender sky, like spiders when a fly is caught, began to appear. And there, not the promised land, but barbwire and barbwire with nothing growing under it. I tried to fly that dusk after a bat said la sangre del saguaro nos seduce. Sometimes I wake and my throat is dry, so I drive to botanical gardens to search for red fruit clutched to saguaros, the ones at dusk I threw rocks at for the sake of slashing hunger. But I never find them here. These bats say speak English only. Sometimes in my car, that viscous red syrup clings to my throat, and it’s a tender seed toward my survival: I also scraped needles first, then carved those tall torsos for water, then spotlights drove me and thirty others dashing into palos verdes, green-striped trucks surrounded us, our empty bottles rattled and our breath spoke with rust. When the trucks left, a cold cell swallowed us.