Elemental Rift 1: This is Desert

This is desert.
The heat drains my energy,
until it feels like my soul has been pulled through my crown.
When I try to look around,
all I feel is my body churning,
my head still, as if fixed on a screen.
I rub my eyes and they fill with sand.

The dunes rise,
and lash at my body.
I'm simultaneously elevated,
to break down in the same scene,
and also buried;
smothered beneath the weight of sand.
This eternal cycle.

I rub my eyes and they fill with sand,
clarity failing,
horizon constraining,
I am the water that takes the shape
of what is around,
and here is shapeless shifting.
This is desert.

[Inspired by the music of Ben Howard and John Luther Adams]