The time lapse didn’t go through. The phone died on the end table where it was perched upon a patio chair. For now, and for ever, the shadows of the clouds upon the craggy peaks will only ever live in my mind. Their supple bodies hovering not so distantly over the leathery faces of Turtleback Mountain. Each one of these little darlings holds a storm. Each one promises a facade of gentleness but could crush me under their weight. They glide by with a lethal serenity I don’t deign to look away from.

This may be the only time I am ever here in my life. The only time me and the Gamble’s Quail will ever share land. The only time the easterly sun will rise over Elephant Butte Lake while I stir upon the brushy sand. The only time the desert rain will ever antagonize the range upon my horizon. The only time I’ll ever be here until I am evermore nowhere.

My mind brushes politely around this idea, no more intrusive than a gentile courter. But we have no time for such unhurried pleasantries. I leave tomorrow and I am faced with the enormous task of wrestling oblivion. The gamble’s quail and Turtleback’s peaks and the clouds whose shadows rest upon them summon me to their enormity. Such beauty that will exist on with no regard to my continued sentience. The quail shall hatch, and the clouds shall hover, and the peaks shall remain in their silence.

How does one reconcile with the deficit of their life? How do we stare bold-faced glory in its eyes and settle for mere percentages? Will we always keep this folded and faded list of things to return to with a solemn understanding that for many of them, we will never meet again in our lifetimes?