This is an early part of my MS in progress:
Thrown back by the essential roar of the earth, we pushed forward toward the door, step by step, to the incredible crevasse that in essence bridged the temporal and the in-temporal. How we might cross was held in the barking of the desert dog—at least, that is how we heard it. This sound breaking. An ant can move a bridge with love just as a human. A dog’s voice is more beautiful than all—that love. We tried to find the love inside ourselves. It was not easy for we each came from a place where love was difficult if not downright dangerous.
She had her throat slit through love.
He his wrists.
One danced on hot coals to the laughter of a crowd by it.
And myself? (yes, I am a self). We can simply say I died of it.
But to survive the desert and cross the crevasse, love was the only possible bridge. We were lucky, for out of the desert came loping a desert dog. Beautiful and lean—your picture books might call her a dingo, or perhaps a coyote, some felt she resembled a wild African dog, some a wolf and even one of us felt she was a brindled pitbull—she came to us because dogs smell need. And respond with unconditional love. We were lucky. She knew.
