Fluffy pancakes with blueberries and cream like the clouds in the desert sky. Please, she says, please.

He will not allow her pancakes for breakfast. She has put on too much weight.

You waddle, your thighs rub together.

A coffee, she asks, in her smallest voice.

He pours weak tea into the polystyrene cup. You get wired when you drink coffee.

The wires that keep animals from straying are long and barbed.

She imagines wine, the deep ruby colour of it; the flavour in her throat like love.

He will not allow her alcohol. It messes with your brain.

She swallows him down, the bitterness of him, along with the words she once spoke. Now her words are thin like mountain-top air, they fly away like migrating birds.

She steps dull and slow to their motel room. He leads her like a fattening calf, in his cowboy boots and cowboy hat, the hat which covers his hair, hair thin as the motel tea.

Their truck is parked outside. Across the lot the trees have been severely pruned. They seem dead but she spies a bud low down, just the one.

I have stomach-ache, he says, it must be something I ate.

She stares at the ground as she shuffles along.

In the bathroom he vomits and cries out. I am dying, you must call a doctor.

You took away my words, she whispers and she picks up the truck keys and closes the door on him and outside the sky is a perfect blue.

The desert road is as long as a marriage, stretching the years between them.

Tomorrow she will have pancakes for breakfast with blueberries and cream, coffee strong as a wrestler.  He will not come looking for her.