Sun-dried mats and rattling bones

It crept beneath the toes like moss

Soft, glowing, inching, silent

Dark shadows and rough leaves

An oasis of a stranger land, nothing

left behind, everything lost to the

sands, gone, drifting, floating.

I lost the time in that age long ago

A feathered abomination ripping my

throat, tearing the flesh, the blood

coursing down, over my skin,

bathing it all in a crimson sheen.

I wiped away the red and replaced

it with the blue, white, blanks, blanks.

There was nothing there. Nothing

at all. It's a joke, says one.

Tis life, says another, drowning out

the hand that drops the package

into the hand of another, lost in

translation. Laughter and silence

go hand in hand, silver, silver.