In the dark, I can hear Kansas breathe. The large empty horizon hides her secrets in indefinitude. Her grasses move gently in the dark breeze, whispering too soft to hear. The wind whispers softly, saying, ‘there is nothing here. Nothing. Go your way. Walk, run, fly away. Because there is nothing. There is only nothing and ever nothing. Nothing forever and always. Eternal nothing’. And Kansas joins in, her heavy sides groaning, her wide expanse breathing, ‘All I have is nothing. My tall, wide prairies are gone. My rolling hills are cleaved by progress. My body aches with your drilling and making and breaking and taking and raping. Nothing. For ever and always, nothing. Always nothing and nothing. Until the end, nothing’.
In the dark, she breathes, heavy and labored. Her solace is in the dark, for then, in the absence of her tormentors, she can remember when she was young and free and open and raging and strong. She remembers when she could hide the richest treasures in her bosom and send their searchers into madness on her wide expanses. She remembers when she could thunder with the sky, matching roar for roar. And she moans in her sadness, for she is a land conquered.
A Journal of Sorts 