It's poignant, and obvious, and grim. It's the landscape of death: A desert, a wasteland, the badlands. And I am alone: A traveller, a vagabond, a lost soul. Tears, sweat and blood erratically fall out of me as to “abandon ship”. I will walk until I die and no logic or reasoning will change how badly I want to.
Wind whips sand up into anywhere that hurts: My ears, eyes and my delicates - titillating enough to make me question my humanity. I drag my bare, burning feet through the sand and the grains below surface level are cool enough that I feel a relief - so as to think “This is surely too good to be true”. This accursed skin lays between wind and skeleton, so as to protect me from sand that would otherwise grind me down to nothing.
A vulture on my shoulder coos and crows constantly. It will never be satisfied. It aches, begging for bones and a carcass and a husk. (Even if I could fulfill its requests, it would not be satisfied. I promise. Please believe me, I have tried I swear I tried my best.) It's never enough - Nothing is! NOTHING I SEVER ENOGUIWU3YR801*(&^%$”?:{p+[‘_
Its claws dig into my collarbones and its beak scrapes along my hip bones. Dirty, stinky, repulsive black feathers are just everywhere all the time. If I’m not walking what am I doing? There’s nothing else to do. Nowhere else to go.
It's hard to come up with each next line. I’d like to write in a nice happy ending about how I don’t have to be in the desert.
The taste of dust doesn’t do much but keep me licking my lips, and the wind is now equally as arbitrary: keeping my hands on my head as if I would care if anything fell off - It all fell apart ages ago!
I can hear the vulture’s beady little eyes flickering to and fro. Cartilage, wastage and guilt forever haunt its cries; My ears numb and ringing in echoes of its screeches. Howls of wind and hunger render my senses weak and unreliable as I wander hopelessly. I can’t take it? I can’t handle it… I never could and I never will. Such a loud vulture don’t you understand! Don’t you get it… I can’t handle it I don’t care I never will be able I’m not strong enough what's so wrong about that? Why is it so bad that I’m weak, how can I still see how everything you say is telling me everyone else is strong enough to handle it - but they sure don’t look like they can?
I hate vultures, so I cover my accursed mouth and lips and face and eyes. I can’t handle a vulture on my shoulder. I want the sand to grind me down to bones before the stupid bird can. I want the wind to wash away all I am before it can. Before my bones stick out and my skin caves in: Before I grow empty and hollow. Before I reduce to a fog, and before every step I’ve taken is reduced to an obituary. Before I’m just a victim, writhing worm for the hungry, hungry vulture.
But my hands over my eyes can’t block out its rage. No number of garments could cover the eerie scars of its neglected, overgrown claws. It yells at me no matter what. It weighs down my shoulder as I shamefully drag my feet through the sand. As long as I keep going forward, I’ll just be afraid of the vulture stabbing me through the heart for good the next time… No matter how much I never want there to be a next time. But it's just so hard to live with a vulture on my shoulder when we both know the skeleton inside.