Manna from heaven

a desert's prayer

I turn it in my hand, this cool, smooth thing.

So many times I’ve turned this cool, smooth thing in my hand. Praying out loud to God; to anyone listening,
‘please. please. save me.’

A miracle, that’s what I’m praying for. I believe in miracles - all else would be lost otherwise. I have no power to assert, I’m just a woman, invisible and irrelevant. It would make no difference if I were a man, they are no longer men in their own eyes. They cannot provide, they cannot defend, they cannot exert themselves in love, lust or anger. They are emasculated and I feel sadder for them than I do for myself. 


This smooth, cool thing I turn in my hand and pray to for a miracle, is a tap. 

It betrays me with every turn, her throat long dry, coated in rust, as still as a corpse with mouth gaping silently open. We are weak and we will die, crippled by thirst, rendered impotent by this war. We are all expiring before each others eyes and still I pray for a miracle.

This war has taken everything all at once; our homes, our families. Then ever after, slowly; our hope, our means to live. I look to the heavens and insist,
‘if I cannot drink from the well, how else shall I survive?’

I cry spilling precious water and it enrages me such that I swear, 
‘I will slit my neighbours throat and drink their foaming blood and streaming tears to keep myself alive’

Fierce tears charge down my face, hot with shame at the rogue thoughts that appear ever more frequently behind these heavy, hollow, dry eyes. I fear these dark thoughts will fracture whatever protection prayer may have provided and invite the darkness to come find me in retribution. 
But I don’t fear the darkness anymore, it holds nothing within it more twisted than I’ve already seen.

I’m sitting in the shade of a burnt-out truck, searching for the relative coolness found in its shadow. Everything stills and sound magnifies. I can hear the whole desert breathing, labouring under the heat like a dog desperatly trying to cool down. Clouds gather in clusters muting the sky’s brightness to dull sepia tones and the dunes turn moody, almost sinister. The wind billows from nowhere, like a door blown open, and sand takes flight in all directions. 
I let it all run riot over me; the sounds, the sepia sky, the showering sand and I feel part of it all, like a cactus grown out of the scrub, weatherbeaten and abused by the elements, but alive.

I plea to the wind,
‘take me with you. Wherever you are going, take me with you.’

I plea to the herd of feather-weight hooves that stampede my tiny folded static body, 
‘trample me to dust. return me to the desert. escort me to the promised land, or hasten me from this hell’

With eyelids sealed shut the darkness bares down around me, seeps inside me, I am saturated and inert. The wind stills abruptly. The door blown open, slams shut. 

I am quiet. I sit. Oddly at peace in the mutilated bosom of my desert land, I am as close to her now as I once was to my own Mother. A song surfaces in my mind. It’s my mother’s voice singing and I’m a child again idly playing outside with my brothers. I hear the sadness in her tone and wonder what hardships she endured that I was blind to. 

I feel her heavy tears land on my cheeks, my head, my hands as she weeps whilst she sings and I pray to her for forgiveness. Her teardrops cleanse my skin like the dancing fingertips of a thousand cherubs and I wonder if I’m being prepared for the end. 
In surrender I yield, and open my eyes.

A miracle.
Rain.



in gratitude to the many privileges I have in my life that render survival a figment of fantasy rather than a fear to face. in gratitude also to love and friendship, without which life would seem more perilous. This is a roundabout way of mentioning @BethKempton and @SoulCircle for prompting thought and inspiring writing.