Tribal butterfly, hearts and flowers on lower back

The lorry driver who dropped me at the Sixty-Mile Wells sold me a cup of coffee the colour of engine oil and told me the road east would take me to the sea if I kept my thumb out and my mouth shut. I have managed the first part badly. Tomorrow a man with a rosary swinging from his mirror is taking me as far as Gila Bend, and he has promised to keep the radio off.

At the diner in Ajo a woman called Ines wiped the counter with a grey rag and asked what I wanted. I said work. She looked at my boots and said her cousin needed someone to carry the ink crates and keep the kettle on in the room behind the kitchen. Her cousin put designs under skin for a living. On the shelf above his sink sat a row of little brown bottles: a purple like a bruise going yellow, a green that smelled of crushed stem, and an orange so bright it made the eye water.

The first sketch he gave me was a butterfly built from tribal swirls, black at the centre and purple at the wings, with a green stem running off it like a vine nobody had bothered to prune. Hearts climbed the stem in violet outlines, and three orange flowers opened where the swirls thinned out. Ines said a butterfly was only a heart that had grown tired of staying put. I laughed, because it was exactly the sort of thing you used to say over the stove.

When the needle stopped I stepped out into the heat with the design still raw and shining, and the road ran straight to the edge of the world. I am writing this on the bench outside the Wells while the sun drops behind the saguaros. Ines says the colour will settle in a week. Tell Dad the purple is purple, not blue. He will ask.

Love, Teodora