The pile of aging couch cushions was spread on the ground under the shade of the open walled tent. I lay on top of them breathing in the dust that permeated the cushions and the desert air, the dust that turned everything the same ghostly gray. It was only nine AM and it must have been near ninety degrees. I had danced until dawn under the milky way and the waxing moon and now my brief sleep was being disturbed by the heat and the urgent rasping of dehydration. As I blinked through the dust my head slipped back off the cushion onto the ground and I was looking upside down at the top of the tent. Then she appeared. Who was she? Her purple slip and sunned skin were silky and smooth and clean and as she leaned down towards me her long hair slid effortlessly forward while in her hand she held out a light-colored orb. As if in a dream I accepted it, this baby coconut, and drank deeply from the hole she had drilled. “Natural electrolytes,” she said, my goddess of the rising sun.
by Siddhartha
