writing the wind

It must be the sounds in this place. She hears them clear, distinct. The chirping of that common sparrow by the trees, now by the edge of the bench where she sits; the wind through the trees, leaves falling, the slow waves incessant in their protest of being caged for others' pleasure. The waves. The waves. Though she prefers their wildness in other spaces, she makes do with these dammed waters. And the wind. The waves are just a distraction, a medium through which she can hear the wind.

What she actually prefers are mountains. And deserts. And... well, she can't stick to anything. Sticking needs two compatible surfaces, or one strong glue, neither of which she has in sufficient supply.

Water to escape, mountains to face, deserts to hope. We'll leave it at that.

It is the silence within everyday sounds she searches for. Or whatever's hidden in plain sight. This obsessive search started in some strange time even she can't recall. It must've been the summer after the sandstorm in the wadi. The day she heard the wind swirling inside a mirage. Though she did not feel it on her skin, there was the sound; the dry crackle, like intermittent short circuits inside the phantom waters up ahead on the dunes, parting it, like a  lover's parched tongue on long-desired skin.

Now she sits here, trying to capture that moment when she first heard it. She knows it is futile; that the wind through these strange fattened lands have a color and sound different from what she knew. Here the wind cries at spires and windows that trap gods in their petrified states. Plaintive sighs. Yet it carries some memory of the desert, a longing for an infinite space, a desire to be wanton, free to howl or stay mute at will. For this place is just another form of a mirage.