How To Catalog The Desert: D

posted Oct 14, 2008

My people live in a village and the desert surrounds us. Sand as far as my little eyes can see. At night Old Mother tells me, The sky is also a desert. The stars, she says, are just peaks of dunes. I ask, Why, then, do they shine so. Your eyes trick you, she says. Light is a mirage. I ask, Why is the sky desert blue at day while ours is tawny. Old Mother says, At night, they both are black. She draws from a pipe and then purrs smoke rings toward rolling waves. The Village of The Sky views our desert blue. Their eyes, she says, see things differently.

Valerie Pell was born in Northern California where she grew up despising her syrupy piano teacher but adoring her inimical cat. However, she has since changed allegiances and now lives happily ever after with her dog and typewriter in Chicago.