Oblivion land

    They search for life wherever there is water, but I have learned to live without it.
    My breath has turned to dust, and my skin is etched with patterns of deep and delicate cracks. People have grown used to calling me dead. Sometimes they walk across me, scrape at me with knives, searching for flaws. They don’t see beauty here. They just say: “It’s only clay.” But I am not only.
    My story cannot be contained in a textbook; to read it, one must stop and truly look.
    I am the place where the Great Water once lived. I remember when salty waves carved my ribs, and turquoise spray shimmered across my sunburned arms. But one day, even the last drop vanished, leaving behind only the faintest signature. For many thousands of years I have held the traces of vanished rivers and lakes—layers of clay in shifting colors: white, amber, red, with turquoise specks. As they crumble, they turn into dust and shards—in other words, into nothing.
    People dismiss them as meaningless debris. Yet tomorrow the wind will rise, scattering the fragments in new shapes, refusing borders or patterns. And the day after tomorrow, the Great Water will return, and I will become part of a new story. And what will they say then?