alone alike.

He inhales dust, the desert in a breath. We are so similar, both drowning without a drop of water. Miles between. The weight of the world in two halves of a scale, one balanced on each of our backs, a chunk of Earth added to his side, then mine. The songs we sing are soft, whispered through mouthfuls of sand, strange and foreign and weird to those who hear. The couple who sometimes understand don't listen anymore. Shy from metaphors applied by strangers, afraid of those who analyze us, we built walls. Our sandcastles contain everything raw, everything sad and wounded and real. We grimace at the thought of letting you in! But we want so badly to have it all torn down, violated, broken. Then again, we get along fine with the sand-dwelling creatures, with the scorpions and their acid-prick poison words that hardly graze our skin. We just want to sleep through it, sleep-walk, day-dream, alone alone alone in a crowd too thick to let us breathe. We inhale.