Hills

I can't make it

And not because I'm out of effort or willpower or sanity

But because I have walked my feet right down to the bloody nubs.

I am stuck, ninety percent of the way to the summit, with my bones

Jammed into the earth like toothpicks in some contemptuous way

That makes me realize this was never about the journey but the last wave

Before the curtain pulls around my throat and dangles me like a warning

In the winds whipping across the summit I never managed to see.

.

I wanted to see it.

Not the Earth covered in fog or the thousands of feet between me

And the river below, the thousands of feet warping my perception,

Aggrandizing my sense of self worth until I'm intolerable.

No, it was never about looking down but about touching the dirt

At the top of this mountain, the one I made out of a small molehill.

It was about pressing palm to dewy earth, cold soil, wet dreams.

It was about feeling the pulse of living and instead I'm dying.

.

Inches away,

Always inches away, stopped before the getting's gotten good.

Held back by a collar fashioned from my own working hands

And the hunger gnawing on my belly because starving is a priority.

I am bleeding out twenty vertical feet away from the soft head

Of a mountain I have climbed for years, turning into a statue

As I sink and bleed and sink some more into the point of no return,

Looking, always looking, toward that curving lip, the edge of the dream.