She flipped through sheet covers with perforations and slits, each holding a sticky image. Stills of a four-year-old pouting in her father’s shirt, a pink flower balanced on her ear. Pictures of herself she doesn’t remember. Until she dropped herself into the image of a dessert, untouched for miles.
The sun welcomed her with rays of soft white light, and a breeze curled around her shoulders, protecting her from the still, cautious warmth. Her toes burrowed into themselves and gathered the grains of sand, resembling stained salt, to balance on the uneven earth. Her nose leaned towards the pale cloud, desperate for any interaction with a heartbeat. She reached to hug it, but her nose passed through the vapor.
And she stayed there, alone on a cloud with commitment issues, on piles of grit with a desire for contact. Crests and troughs blended into each other, mixing with the faint sky, faded from the pressure of a headlight. She stared at it, studying its power, or lack thereof.
She watched the heat turn cooler as it passed through the atmosphere until it touched her skin. It should’ve been warmer. It should’ve made her sweat. It should’ve made her nauseous. It should’ve warmed her. Grains of sand amplified under the breeze that should be stronger; strong enough to palm each particle and spray her with sprinkles until she was gone. Documentaries of the heatstroke, storms, how the sand cooks bare feet at midday reminded her that her perception was wrong.
She should be hallucinating, an oasis glinting on her pupils. She should be running towards it, ready to engulf her body into the ocean of sandpaper and smile as it burns her skin. The longer she stayed, the more she realized that the sand beneath her feet resembled broken glass. Each shard was mirroring the colorless blood pulsing between the cracks in her toes.
Until she was forced back into equations and dynasties, hiding the past she couldn’t quite remember.