Desert Sentinel Under Red Light

🔴 

A cactus, caught in crimson—

not from sun or fire, but from the brake-light hush

of some passing machine with glowing eyes.

Stillness becomes theater,

and the spines, once a warning,

now shimmer like velvet spears.

In the language of desert silence,

this red is a syllable—a stutter of light

pronouncing: witness me.

Each needle holds a memory of heat,

and now it pulses with an artificial fever,

alive for just a moment longer than it should.

Behind it, shadows huddle—brush, sky,

the muted choir of creosote and stone.

But this one stands alone, illuminated—

not for protection, not for bloom,

but for the strange beauty of being seen

in a color the night didn’t ask for.

And still, it stands.

WE&P by: EZorrillaMc.