Читать книгу American Happiness - Jacqueline Trimble - Страница 12

THE RELATIVITY OF MIDLIFE

When I was young, time was a desert stretching to the sea. A taste for salt and cowrie shells kept me on the move. Some days there were windstorms. Some days no oasis in sight. But everything was poetry, even the parched lips of camels, the sway of their haunches rhythmic as sex. Once, a plane fell from the sky, its wide hawk-like shadow foretelling the end of the story. Another traveler’s head caught the burning fuselage. To me, the blast was a firecracker, the buzz of a distant fly. I lay in tents woven of goat hair, wishing on the flecks in my lover’s eyes. Smells of roasted meat lingered in the air, on my fingers. My belly full to bursting with wine and dates too. Soon I would learn, most nights hold nothing but hard earth, and still I desired this journey to last and last.