There Was Once This Woman Who, at Dawn, Trespassed Across the Sand

DEBBIE URBANSKI

She built a tower for herself. What a waste of sand, they all thought, and to not lower her hair down—who waits, in a desert, to be overcome and by what? A flood of what to take her? She might have settled for the picador, who had a nice trough outside his stable, or the butcher, who could have stuffed her with his leftovers, no, she demanded more like a fool whose eyes had been put out. So the men turned their mules away toward other towers, toward other maidens who let down their trapped braids as expected, leaving this other woman to grow old.

Eventually she lost her hair. Her tower collapsed. The end and yet it isn’t. Those who saw her rubble asked what have you lost? But look at what she has: the rubble, her loss.