The middle

We had siloed ourselves off in a corner of the vast desert and we were trying to start a new world. In a large rectangular swatch of sand that butted up against a tall rock face we spread out rocks in the pattern of stars and planets — if we could get the star map just right, it would have vast implications, it would spell peace. I noticed something, though, that once the rocks were spread — and they were all different sizes and it was beautiful — that they didn’t move, and it looked like they never would. We needed collision as evidence of the crash. So I picked up rocks and tossed them. Kept tossing them. Then wrote this in the sand. 

I was friends with two women, one of whom I liked to hold and who liked to hold me. I would run across the sand, like I was flying, and come to them. They hung apart from the group. They had escaped a bad way. We all had, but them especially. They were skeptical of this new group and its plan. More than I was. I stood in the middle, between them.