Your bones seem to be made up of sun and clay, formed out of days curing in the desert heat.  The landscape is made up of infinite colors--ochre, mica, taupe, sienna, layered together to form hills, plateaus, and muddy river beds.  The colors are never still, never just brown, never just layers of settled dust (regardless of what those outsiders say).

It is the smell of pinto beans cooking on the stove and the necessity of homemade tortillas (are those store-bought discs really worthy of the name?).  It is knowing the difference between "chile" and "chili"--the former in your blood, the latter, a sacrilege. It is knowing that tequila and tamales are the best medicine, though you know your way around the herbs in your garden, a gift from the curandera magic running through your veins. 

And then there's the turquoise. It has taken over the sky, filling up the city corner to corner like the dry desert air fills up your lungs, chasing out the soul sickness that settled between your ribs when you lived--briefly, the desert always called you back--in a damp, dark place.  Plus the sun.  Always the sun.  Always the sky that goes on forever making it impossible for you to hide from yourself. 

It is your collection of rocks and crystals, each stone a link in your connection to the land, and the faint smell of burning sage in the air to cleanse your home of stale energies.  In the bright colors you scatter across your home and the big earrings that will always call to you.  In the different colors that make up you--brown, red, white--never quite at ease with each other and yet part of the same soil that birthed you.

Yes, it is the sun you must have, and the wide open sky above you, and the desert earth beneath your feet.  Only then are you whole.