i put myself anywhere now. the crown of my head snuggles into the dirt. i let my nose bend, feel the individual grains pressing into my pores, filling me slowly, filling me deliberately. i didn't always nestle to the dirt, i didn't always know it as i know it now.

to see someone in thier normal suit, knees in the earth, chest hovering, rolling their head in dirt like a baker rolls dough, or a man rolls a joint, or a gambler rolls dice, to see a perfectly dressed human human crown to crown, would perhaps, unnerve you. it unnerved me. i thought surely this woman had lost her mind and then i checked myself, perhaps i was seeing things. the first hypothesis was false, but the second one, the second one exactly right. i was witnessing something, something strange, something that made me sweat, something that when i closed my eyes i couldn't shake, something wholly different, something scarily free.

she was black, as dark as any human i've ever seen. she was black in the way that everything else seemed sharp, clear as the focus of ten thousand lenses or she was black like an absolute, no room for exceptions or additions or she was black like perfection, yes, that's it, she was black like perfection. she had long hands that spread themselves out along the sides of her face and she kept rubbing her head like that, rubbing it, softly, in loving and exhausted swirls. with her hands and face like that i could have sworn she was looking into something, trying to root something out, or perhaps to root herself in. she looked exhausted but in exstasy like when you've run a really long time and you collapse to the earth and breath, breath, breath again. maybe she had been running, maybe she came from very far away.

i turned around to see if anyone was looking, but people bustled about in their bubbles as people often do. i looked back, the scene was as i left it. a beautiful, young black woman in a business suit rubbing her head into the dirt. the dessert is tan, tan in a static, photographic way. the elements seem suspended. i feel no sense of heat, i smell not her sweat, i hear not the movement of the dry dirt beneath her forehead. all i see is all i see. this could be an advertisement, i can't be sure. the world is so virtual now, who knows if i simply lost myself in an ad for all natural facial toner? but something tells me that this is a message from a wholly different source. the motion is slow and it looks as if she draws the same pattern. i try to look away, but even when i do, i see her in every blink.