HOW TO SLEEP IN THE DESERT

How to sleep in the desert:

Don’t. A night unmoving in the desert is never advisable.

If you must, gather as many towels as you have windows and make sure your doors lock.
Memorize the sound of sand moving. Memorize the sound of her heart. Sound is all you have now.

Hide your face. Hide her face. Trap the towels in the windows. Cover the front and back
windshields. Trap yourselves before something else does.

Speak quietly. Be sure of the voices in the car. Be sure of yourself. Whisper truths about the
wind in your veins so you know when it’s lying.

Thank the sun when you see it again. Grasp the light and be not afraid of the burn etching into
the plates of your palm. Be not afraid of love.

Carolina Ayala is a Mexican artist, recently graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Creative Writing, and plans to continue their education at University of Kansas in their masters program. They began as a journalist, but gave into their essayist urges and eventually tried poetry—which they begrudgingly admit is their mother tongue. Ayala has been previously published in Allium: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, and can be found on Instagram @ayalcaro moonlighting as a photographer.