No final scene, no frozen frame, I just watched it slowly fade away.

I'm in a desert. A red, dusty desert that hasn't seen rain in weeks. Everything is dying. Shrinking. Seizing. Sinking. Shriveling into a foreign, wrinkled shape. What's left of a cactus. Hard and dry and delicate. Like if a desert bird landed on it, during it's perilous search for water, the cactus might disintegrate. Turn to dust. The ashes of a cactus. And I. Sunburnt and starving and saving all my strength for a rain dance every morning. An exuberant, enthusiastic rain dance. Pleas to the gods of rain to send one drop to my dry and salty tongue. So I might have hope that more is on the way.

But I'm getting less optimistic. My high knees and jazz hands are faltering when, day after day, there isn't a cloud in sight.

Big winds travel across the desert. Picking up debris and sand into dust devils that whirl around me. The movement of the sand sounds like a whisper. I can almost hear what they are saying. But it is as if they are keeping a secret. Speaking quietly, as to not let me hear, the fantasies and facades they have imagined about me. I am not worried that they know things. I am paranoid that they do not know, and thus, invent.

I am waiting for the dust to settle. And for the rain to come, wash away every concern I have. My face stained red and clothes, muddied and heavy with collected sand in their seams, pockets and creases. I'm waiting for life to return to this barren valley, and for hope to return to my dry and cracked skin. My thin skin.

I have very thin skin.

But I don't feel a rainstorm coming. I can't smell it in the air. My bones are frail and weak and unable to support a whole-hearted "sprinkler" move. I wonder if I should start blaming myself. Maybe if I'd held on a little longer, danced my rain dance with more fury, more desire. Maybe that would've brought rain. Maybe it's really my fault.

Then I remember. I don't make the weather. The weather is the weather and I can't control it. Maybe I should leave.

I love this valley, despite it's empty and dry landscape. Despite the hardships it puts me through, I care for every ounce of ground under my feet. But for a long time, I thought I brought something here. I thought I had something special and unique to offer, and that the rain would come if I simply held out hope. Hope is a funny thing. I can't see it, or taste it. But I can feel it. I can feel it falling between my fingers, slipping from my grasp. Like a handful of sand.

These sand storms are putting dust into my eyes. The dust in my eyes is bringing tears. Too many tears. Tears that couldn't make this soil fertile again, no matter how much I cried.

Maybe I should leave the valley. And perhaps, when there is a big enough, grey enough, thick enough cloud descending upon the valley, I will return.

I wasn't made for this.

A little more than a little luck.