The Weight of Distance

To travel is to shed layers. You leave the city, the noise, the familiar weight of your own name. Eventually, you reach a place where the horizon does not promise anything. It only exists. In the north, we know the silence of ice; here, the silence is made of sand. It is a different kind of cold, one that burns the skin instead of freezing it. You walk until your shadow becomes a stranger. You look for a landmark, but the wind has already moved it. There is a comfort in this erasure. When everything you recognize is stripped away, you are left with the rhythm of your own breath. It is a small, steady sound against the vastness. Does the desert wait for us to arrive, or does it simply wait for us to disappear?