memory of a desert road

You're lying on the tarmac. If asked why, you'd answer that it was simply because you could; a willingness to do what you feel inclined to do, as and when you feel it. Nor are you held in check by societal convention -- that poisonous thorn in the side of free expression -- and not, as people are quick to assume, because your perception of it is off, but because you don't put so much weight on things that should be considered trivial.

The same poison is what keeps people from singing out loud on the streets when the songs are just fighting to burst forth; when people do, some will assume that they're nuts and look around for faces to share the joke with, some will change colour, embarrassed because they like it and feel that they shouldn't, and some will smile, both inward and without, and perhaps feel envious at being able to enjoy something they've always wanted to do, but as a spectator.

And so you're lying on the tarmac, less an audience, arms and legs splayed in a personal depiction of Calvary, fingers extended, eyes wide. You lie face down because you get a better sense of feeling, the soft skin of your cheek pressed against the scorched surface of the road, your stomach flattened against warm gravel; you face the West for relief, because although it is yet past noon, the sun is high and the glare of her gaze is unbroken by the drifting threads of cloud. For a while, you vacantly lose yourself in the haze of shimmering air, the odd wetness that hugs the ground wherever a horizon is formed between you and anything in the near distance, and muse that any vehicle happening upon you now would take you for dead.

Except that Arizona is vast, and there are places where you can do odd things on public roads without the likelihood of being observed or judged or driven over for days.

And as you lie there, the only thing you really crave is a garden sprinkler.