It Is Not

We have the body of a woman, an arch over the ground, but there is no danger. Her hair falls, spine bowed, but no one is with her. The desert, yes, with its cacti, bursage, sidewinders. She is not in danger. If we notice, there are the tracks of animals moving east toward the sunrise. And the light is about to touch a woman's body without possession. Here, there are no girl's bones in the earth, marked with violence. A cholla blooms, just two feet away. It blooms. There is a man, like her father, who wakes to a note saying I have gone, for a day, to the desert