The day it snowed in the Sahara
is the day you left us. The honey-
amber dunes morphed into the white knuckles

of mountain peaks. As the flakes were falling,
you were dropping F-bombs across the house,
sending the kids running for cover,

hands pressed over ears, heads in their laps.
In the Sahara, the sandman slept
under a blanket and the wide-eyed

children pressed footprints in the snow, slid
down slushy hills and built desert snowmen.
Before you walked out I threw a chair

and a hot bowl of chicken noodle soup.
It was unexpected —like the snowfall
in the Sahara, fire and ice colliding.