Desert Farmer

He wakes up in the morning, while the sky is still dark. He watches for a moment the rise and fall of her rib cage, his wife wrapped in a plain white cotton night dress, before pulling on his still dusty jeans and bending his toes into steel toed boots. He eats the same thing for breakfast every day, pancakes from wheat from the north field. The north field lies fallow now. Before he leaves for the day he gets down on his knees and prays for any moisture from the sky. On his way across the red fields he notices that his knuckle is bleeding, but doesn’t know why. As the harrow slashes through the dry and rigid ground, he daydreams about the rise and fall of her ribcage, the color of storm clouds, the inside of the tractors belly and his own. After shedding three drops, his blood dries up too.