In the Desert We Get Sunburned
In the desert we drive all night under the stars and sleep through the sticky day. The highway blurs under our wheels, sun-baked and swallowed by sand, losing focus as the days roll past and signs of civilization disappear from the horizon. The coyotes howl after us, lifting their voices in perpetual mourning. One evening I awaken just as the sun is setting to see Jason crouched half a dozen paces from a skinny, mostly-grown pup, teasing it closer with a bite of sandwich. It bows its head, wary, skittering forward and retreating as its hunger wars with its fear. In the end fear wins out, and Jason stands as it lopes away, back to its pack. His face is a little fallen as he turns back to the car and I quickly close my eyes, feigning sleep so that he can keep this memory for himself.
In the desert we drive from one rest stop to the next, stocking up on bags of chips and dented cans of grape crush. We buy groceries at gas stations and eat peanut butter and jelly for days, and our hands leave sticky fingerprints on maps and each other's bodies. We argue over radio stations until we travel too deep to receive anything but static, and then we argue over CDs, or silence. Somewhere in Tucson Jason buys a book on cacti and we become horticulturists, searching out different species and checking them off beside their pictures. We argue over the identification of a species of astrophytum and don�t speak for an hour. I break the silence by calling Jason illiterate and he responds by pouring the dregs of a grape soda over my head. We pull over five minutes later and make up.
In the desert we make love by the side of the road, where anyone could see but no one does. We waste a whole day of travel discovering how many ways we can do it; tangled up in the back seat, spread across the hood of the car, clinging together in the warm, gritty sand. For days we sweep sand from our clothes and pick it out of our food, releasing tiny showers of it every time we shake our heads. We make love softly in the morning and leave bruises under the midday sun, and when we finally cross back to civilization we watch them fade and forget how they were made. In the desert we take each other apart and when we put ourselves back together there is sand in our heads, there are stars in our eyes, and the howl of coyotes is in our ears, perpetually mourning.