Even in the desert, abandoned by our camels, you had to be subdued from jogging. Must jog, you thought. You sat pulsing your muscles, pissed you couldn’t do more, and more. We had very little water and a long way to walk. We had to walk slowly, or we’d kill ourselves. You pulsed your muscles during the day when we rested, afraid of the death of them instead of just death.
         At night, we got up and traveled with the use of our light-up compass. Go North, Go North, Go North, I repeated, my mantra. So we went north. We waited for the sight of civilization--a Cyprus tree--a piece of art--a game--a language. One hanging plant.
         You liked the sand since it could be used as weights. You scooped it into a t-shirt contraption and wrapped this around your waist. I looked over at you and could hear your soft chanting counting--pulsing, flexing, huffing, beating. You let me have most of the water. You just wanted the protein. I thought of subduing you again. I calculated the risks of my spending energy on subduing you and the potential benefit. I saw that there was no potential benefit. I took your offer of water for protein. I let you eat all the dried, salty fish.
         Our camels had leapt over us as we slept, tied to rotten sand, loose in its core. They sped north without us, as if meeting lovers or visas. I calculated that we had miles, many miles to go, a couple of Lawrences of Arabia stuck in the literal middle of an impossible situation, and quarreling.
         Your muscles eventually withered--like wind blowing over the sand, they were gone. You wept in my arms and my tongue throbbed at the sight of all that undrinkable fluid. You began to insist we walk during the day, to be tough, tougher. I told you about my calculations. You walked off without me, noon, sun a paste made of pistols, and I debated if I should follow and have company and die, or not. I followed.
         You decided we should go not just north but northeast--like to New York.
         I always wanted to make it to NY, you said, deranged. I told you I wasn’t sure. I drew you sand maps that you walked over at a northeast diagonal. My whole outside skin was a red sea with orange islands. My tongue felt like a brick of dust, squared and about to break. We slept at night now, swallowing thankfully its gray falling chips.
         You tried to use the mirage as a mirror. You looked out into it with this pleading, begging look, begging it for a reflection. You wished you were in your bedroom, working out hard in front of the mirror, pretending the mirror was a person watching, and someone who really mattered.
         Could we survive a week, moving at our pace, and without water? The camels, we admitted, were never coming back. They’d found, with animal perfection, something like salvation--or they hadn’’’t and we’d find the stumps of their souls, the dead bodies, on our journey. In the end, I can’t believe I followed you northeast, when I knew we were meant to go north, not to New York but to Canada.