without the rope.
I stop in front of a large ocotillo,
its branches long wands,
wondering whether I could somehow use one.
But even the tallest wand is probably
only a third as tall as the canyon.
Dad could climb a little, grab on to it.
The thorns would pierce his hands
the whole way.
They would pierce mine as I held it.
The pain would be unreal.
Could it, could I, hold his weight?
Could I use a tree branch?
The palo verde,
the mesquite,
the ironwood,
all have large thorns,
and their branches aren’t nearly long enough.
The rib of a saguaro skeleton?
I haven’t seen one,
and they’re probably too brittle.
Could I use another kind of plant?
Weave a rope like the Tohono O’odham
weave their beautiful baskets?
What do they use?
I’ve learned about this so many times
at national parks, museums, art shows, and classes.
Yucca? Devil’s claw? Bear grass?
I can’t remember, but I know
I’ve seen none of that.
And how long would that take anyway?
To weave a forty-foot rope?
Too long.
What if Dad isn’t even in the canyon?
What if he’s already climbed out?
What if we’ve somehow
missed each other?
And I’m walking in the hot sun,
no water to be found.
Walking to nowhere and no one.
WALKING ON WATER
I keep replaying it in my mind.
I can see and feel the backpack
slipping from my fingers
over and over again.
The weight of it.
The weight of the water within.
I should never have climbed to that cave.
Even if a flood had come, drowning
would have been better than this dehydration.
My need is so intense, I would do anything
to be floating in the black water right now,
water filling and spilling into my mouth and throat
and even my lungs.
There’s water under my feet.
Beneath the hard, hot desert ground,
the underneath is filled with endless aquifers.
Despite literally walking on water
to find my dad, I can’t drink a single drop
from underneath.
DESPERATION
I now carry the dry desert
on my skin,
in my eyes,
in my nose,
in my mouth.
Dust coats the inside of my cheeks
and the surface of my teeth.
A cactus clogs my throat.
Sand covers my tongue.
It’s a wonder I don’t disintegrate
into a puff of powder.
I see a pop of pink ahead,
and my wobbly legs automatically speed up.
Please, please, please…
I almost collapse in relief at the sight
of prickly pear, the last
few fall fruits clinging to the plant,
the rest having been eaten and carried away
by birds and beetles and javelinas.
Dad and I used to pick the fruit together
to make prickly pear Popsicles,
sweet and cold and refreshing,
the taste like watermelon.
Dad’s instructions were strict
to save me from the spines.
Always, always use tongs
to pull the fruit off the plant.
I grasp the fruit in my bare hands,
tearing it from the green paddles,
the small, nearly invisible, hairlike spines
getting into every inch of my skin.
Watch out for the bigger needles.
A large spine pierces my tender hand,
going deep enough to draw blood
when I tear it out.
You have to open the fruit carefully,
with gloves, a sharp knife,
a spoon to lift the fruit out.
I drop the fruit on the ground
and smash it with my boot,
then I pry it open
with my thorn-filled fingers
and suck the meager warm fruit out.
Never put it in your mouth
until all the small spines are gone,
or you’ll be very, very sorry.
The needles find their way
into my lips and mouth and gums
and tongue and cheeks,
juice staining all it touches
in flaming fuchsia.
Everything in the desert has thorns.
Everything in the desert hurts you.
Strain the fruit to remove
the stone-hard seeds.
I eat every last fruit
skin and spines
and seeds and all,
not willing to waste
a single drop
by spitting any of it
on the ground.
I can’t get enough.
I could never get enough.
I swallow mouthful after mouthful,
my stomach filling with stones.
I’d have to eat about a thousand fruits
to satisfy my need.
The flavor brings me back
to those icy cold Popsicles.
The three of us sitting on the porch
dripping hot pink everywhere
while Mom reads us her newest poem.
I want to cry, but don’t.
I have to move on,
my thirst barely muffled
by what I’ve just done to myself.
UNDERNEATH
A dust devil spins
across the landscape
like a small tornado.
I watch it as I walk,
wishing it were made
of water like a waterspout.
I would dive inside it and let it
twist me, twirl me, whisk me away.
The devil moves in my direction,
or my own feet are carrying me
toward the column of dust,
as though I’m not controlling them,
as though they have a mind of their own
and that mind believes
there’s water in the whirlwind.
Water.
Not just to drink, but to dive.
I remember swimming with my mom
in our pool in the desert.
The coconutty smell of sunblock.
The sounds of splashing
and her voice, like the sun’s warm embrace
on my skin.
My hair soaks up every ray
and heats to burning.
My toes sting
on the terribly named cool decking,
and I dip them in the refreshing blue.
And then I jump into the cold water,
the relief against my hot scalp so intense
it gives me chills.
The feel of chlorine in my eyes.
The blurred sounds and images of the underneath
when I tried to stay under as long as possible,
challenging myself to hold my breath always longer,
my mom worried I wasn’t coming back up.
I reach the dust devil,
and it envelopes my body for only a second
before dissolving back to the desert.
I take in a lungful of dust and stop, double over,
heaving and coughing.
I can barely breathe until every grain is gone.
I stand back up, wipe at my sand-filled eyes,
and continue along the edg
e.
I feel as though I’m in the underneath now,
images all blurry, holding my breath.
But without the coolness of the water to soothe
my burning cheeks, blazing scalp, battered body.
And without my mom here to worry
that I won’t be coming back up.
DANIELLE
The mirages are all around me.
I’m so thirsty I can almost believe,
convince myself, tell myself,
they’re really water, even though
I also know that’s impossible,
that the desert is now tricking me,
taunting me, teasing me
with its terrible heat waves.
Water.
If only I were floating in the hot night
with Danielle, our feet splashing
outside our tubes, talking endlessly
about boys and books and movies and makeup
and what we want to do when we’re older.
Maybe I’ll be a park ranger.
Maybe Danielle will be a stylist.
If I were there, I would drink the whole pool.
If only that could happen again,
that we could be there again,
floating and talking and laughing and splashing.
If only that hadn’t stopped.
How could I have let that stop?
How could I—
A wave of dizziness overcomes me,
sends me stumbling toward
the edge, and for a split second,
I think I’ll tumble right over it,
not sure where solidness ends
and emptiness begins.
I fall to the ground on my butt,
only inches from the drop-off.
I sit in the hot dirt and wait
for the dizziness to pass,
my sunburned face in my mangled hands.
If Danielle would ever be my friend again,
I’d have nothing left to give her now.
Nothing but skin,
burned, torn, and pierced with thorns.
Nothing but hair,
chopped, tattered, and matted with mud.
Nothing but this thirst,
overwhelming, overpowering, overtaking me.
I know, I know, I know
she wouldn’t ask for more than that.
She never, ever asked for anything
but me.
TRUTH
Danielle sits on my bed in my room,
squeezing one of my pillows to her chest,
tears running down her glistening brown cheeks.
I don’t know how to help you, Nora.
You can’t.
I want to help you.
You can’t.
I’m trying to understand.
You can’t!
You can’t!
You can’t!
I scream at her over and over again,
my eyes clenched shut,
hands clamped over my ears.
I hate her right now.
She loves me,
and I hate her
because she can’t understand.
Because it happened
to me and not her.
And so I scream.
You can’t!
You can’t!
You can’t!
Go away!
Go away!
Go away!
I scream it long enough
that when I finally stop and open my eyes,
she’s gone.
And when she calls later that day,
I don’t answer.
When she calls the next day,
I don’t answer.
When she calls the day after that,
I don’t answer.
Danielle chose to leave my life
because it was the only choice
I gave her.
LIMINAL SPACE
Time between what was
and whatever might come next
is liminal space.
IN-BETWEEN
After it happened, I thought everyone would be
impacted, altered, changed forever.
But everyone else was exactly the same.
Dad and I were the only ones who were
impacted, altered, changed forever.
I didn’t know
what to do,
how to act,
who to be,
in the in-between space
of what was and what might be.
I only knew for sure what would
never be again.
COME BACK
I force myself up.
I continue walking.
I move forward.
Eleanor, sometimes people who have experienced
a traumatic event come back
even more resilient than they were before.
There’s no excuse for giving up.
I have to keep trying.
Even when I once more veer
toward the edge.
Even when my knees
begin to buckle.
Even when the black spots
dance in my eyes,
I have to never stop trying.
I can come back from this.
I want to live.
And I want Dad to live.
The clouds are moving in,
the desert sky growing ever darker,
giving me some relief
from the burning sun.
I’m grateful for every cloud.
The refreshing smell of creosote
suddenly fills the air and my lungs.
It gives me the tiniest boost,
clears my clogged mind,
drains an ounce of lead from my legs.
It’s raining again.
Not here. Not over me.
Somewhere.
But even if it didn’t rain
for a very long time,
the creosote bush would survive.
It can live up to two years
without water.
It may even drop its branches,
but it keeps what it needs in the root crown,
so it can come back.
I’ve shed leaves.
I’ve even torn away branches,
but I still have what I need in my root crown.
And so I can come back.
I’ve survived this last year.
I’ve gone half as long as the creosote bush.
I can go another year.
But I want this year to be different.
I don’t want to survive the next year
as I did the last year.
I want to live the next year.
I can come back.
WONDERSTRUCK
The afternoon sun pauses all movement,
making the desert still and vast and quiet
around me while I walk.
I have to tell myself to keep putting
one foot in front of the other.
Even when the only thought in my mind
is to lie down somewhere, curl up under a tree,
and sleep forever, I have to keep putting
one foot in front of the other.
And then I’m stopped,
my legs and my heart.
An animal stands
at the edge of the canyon,
looking down into it.
It turns its face to me.
My heart resumes pounding
as I try to make out what it is
through sanded, sun-scorched eyes.
Mountain lion?
Coyote?
Bobcat?
It can probably sense
that I’m weak, nearing my end,
unable to fight back.
But it only stands there,
as still as I am.
I focus my eyes as well as I can.
Too small for a mountain lion.
; Looks like a coyote
but
reddish legs and underside,
white throat,
long, bushy tail with a black tip,
sun glowing pink through its
pointy, triangular ears.
A fox.
I stay as still as possible,
no longer scared, but because
I don’t want to scare it away.
It tilts its head at me,
watches me with curiosity,
with wariness.
It doesn’t seem to understand
what I am.
The desert surrounding us
is as still and vast and quiet
as my mind, and I am
wonderstruck
to see a fox in the desert.
I wish Dad were here.
I stretch out my hand,
and that’s all it takes
to scare the fox away.
But as though I somehow
summoned Dad
with the power of my wishing,
I look down into the canyon,
and
there he is.
SO CLOSE
I’ve found him.
I open my mouth to call out to him.
Nothing but a rasp escapes because
I screamed my voice away last night.
He lies on his stomach,
his head turned toward me.
His eyes
sealed shut with mud.
His clothing
torn to shreds.
His skin
burned and sanded off.
His hair
patchy and matted with mud and blood.
His left arm
contorted strangely behind him.
His backpack
still on and in one piece.
I’ve found him.
Finally.
I’ve reached him.
He’s so close, so close
I could stretch out a hand
and nearly touch him,
washed up on a ledge
about five feet below me.
No, not washed up.
I see the trail of handprints and boot prints
and streaks of mud and blood
where he dragged himself
up a series of outcroppings until he reached