The chairs leaned back, lined up like sentries at rest. No one else around. Just us, the quiet, and the trailer’s long silver side catching the last warmth of the sun. I sat for a while, letting the light fall behind the prairie, letting it go slow.
I had shrimp for dinner. Cold from the cooler, cocktail sauce sharp on my tongue. A woman’s dinner, simple and earned. No one to cook for, no one asking questions. Just the sky and the land and the way they didn’t demand anything from me.
The desert stretched out ahead, flat and soft with dusk. Sagebrush low and scattered, the kind of wild that doesn’t shout but waits. I could see the windmills far off, their blades still, outlined in the soft rise of earth. Lights ran across the top of them—red, slow-blinking, like eyes half-closed. Odd to see windmills here in the desert, but they were marked for planes. We were close to an airport. Everything gets lit when you have to be seen from the sky.
Then the stars arrived. They came quietly, politely at first, until they filled the whole sky. I didn’t say anything. Just watched. The kind of stars that make you feel smaller, but not in a way that hurts. In a way that soothes. Like you’re part of it.
The air was cool now. I could smell juniper, and something else—maybe dust, maybe sage. A Jeep rested by the porch. My porch for the night. My place. I had no plans but to watch the sky and let the dark come.
And it did. And I stayed.
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