New Work: the one who went away

You are more alive now
Than you ever were in life.
More beautiful in breathlessness
Than a china doll
Propped in a toy-shop window.

Night after night
I reach out
As the hand that reaches for a pocket that isn’t there.
Your beauty burns like a mirage on the horizon
My flesh aches like a desert
Dreaming of the sea.

Nocturnal whisperer,
Will you stay with me this once?
Will you consummate our souls into constellations
So that we can be reborn
Like stars in the night?

Or will you wane like an echo
Fainter and fainter
Til at last
These idle tears are spent
Like moon pools in the dawn?

—-
Took this in Badwater Basin in Death Valley last week. I had such an incredible experience being in the desert. I’ve wanted to go for almost 2 years now, so this trip was long overdue. I shot this at dawn with the help of my friend Dan holding the skeleton. We had quite a time lugging this huge skeleton across the basin and getting him to pose properly!