Landscape in an afterlife

Someone was running at night
and someone was being picked up.
The dunes glowed in the distance,
from one end of the world to the other,
like a border. We knew there were others
on the other side. We could hear
their chants, see the smudge-lines
of smoke from their fires. Every step
filled our shoes with sand. We were always
trying to run toward each other. The air
smelled of sulfur and the granular residues
suspended in the air after cities had burned
into ghosts. Why did we even want to look
for signs of stars and planets gone
into hiding in the dark?