Of the Desert and my Soul
By Zac Holt
WINNER OF THE RIVER’S SPRING 2025 FLASH FICTION CONTEST
As I walked through the wide open desert, the blue skies grew dark with black clouds. There was
no place to hide so I kept walking. Up and down hills of sand. After some time the rain started.
The sand-filled gullies before me ran red with blood-colored water. I stopped to watch the desert
erode around me. Then the rain drops turned to blood and I was consumed by red water—or
maybe turned into it.
Is this real? Of course not.
I live in the clouds. The rain starts when I cut myself into a million pieces and bleed into the
skies. The clouds filter out what’s bad and leave only clear water to run across the countryside
and bring to life white lilies, purple lilacs, and dandelions yellow as the sun.
Zac Holt is a second-year creative writing student at The University of Maine at Farmington. He
was a finalist in the Storm King Poetry Festival, has been published in The Cairn Literary Arts
Journal, and has released a poetry chapbook “A Poet in Three Parts” with Bottlecap Press
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