I reached the peak of a mountain, once. It was romantically chilly— I felt like clouds were surrounding me, that I was so high, I could jump to the wings of nearby airplanes and kiss their windows. I couldn't, though, because they weren't actually clouds at all. They were cancerous waves of smoke— somewhere south, everything was burning. I wadn't let to forget it, either. But even as fires took advantage of trees, igniting them to dehydrated tears, it froze up on that mountain. I stuck my foot down a gash in the solid rock, and reached over for a blanket. I put some cheese on a cracker— I bit, and lost the cracker down that gash.
I wiped the tears from my eyes; the wind was getting strong.
Anyone who's ever climbed a mountain before will tell you the same as me. Climbing down is really fucking hard when there's winds blowin. But when you're fifty yards or so above all that abusive smoke, an' you're squinting into the fire-red sun n licking your lips, why else would you stay? The wind could pick up, and you could fall. Or worse— the fire would swarm north, manhandling the northwestern country until it licks the base of the mountain.. this mountain, climbing higher an' higher until we choke and burn.
No, that's no good for a script.
So now, we're climbing back down. We try our best not to look back, it only makes it harder that way. We could get dizzy. The wind doesn't help either, pushing us every which way, turning us green n blue... I'm losing you. Sometimes the mountain gets real steep, and we might wonder for a few blinks how the hell we ever got so high; we did, though, so we keep looking down an' watching our feet more carefully than ever before.
It's only now that I can see that we're barefoot.
So I hold your feet, supporting the rest of you on my back, but most importantly holding your soft feet in my hands... I stop. You ask me what stops me. You comment that my heart is beating abnormally fast— as if you know (and you do). I mutter a small nothing, but my mind is whirling like the wind; how did your feet become so soft? Are we really here, trampling through rough stone and granite? I am reminded, as I stifle a groan, because my feet, they do throb... I glance down, and count the number of scars I can spot. Some are covered from the ash, but I spot three to sixteen of em. So ugly! So calloused! So— ow! You're biting my ear! My fingers slip between your toes and grip the fleshy indents; such a tight grip, you dropped your shoe:
I'm losing you. The sun has nearly completely disappeared, dipping beneath the scorched trees— an' still we trek on, the green eyed daughter resting on the back of the green eyed son, an' still I hold your smooth, dry feet; look at mine! We leave behind such a grotesque trail of blood, one that no one will ever see, or have any desire to see. The wind continues to swirl around us, kicking up blood into our faces, an' your legs wrap around my waist more tightly than ever— while I wince, my bloody stumps carrying us down and further down this mountain we once climbed in the name of love.
You whisper to me again that my heart is beating fast. I wonder, for the second time, how you actually know this... and how much else you know, or could know if you felt like trying. I take a step, wondering when was the last time I have sat down. I take a nother step, wondering that if there was a fire, would the night go away? I then tried to step again, and a rock resisted my stump, as if it had come from nowhere! I fell, and twisted my body to absorb the rough ground; I ate a stale mouthful of dirt. I sat ashamed, rubbing your feet like soap, washing my hands clean.
I looked up just then, from the cracked soil, and everything was ablaze. The trees cried, just as their brothers and sisters had endured. The smoke that once came out in waves was now a tsunami in the sky, birds were falling out of the sky; somewhere, cheese melted on a cracker.
But the smoke was not there. It convened into a canopy, and solidified, morphing into a familiar white, forming my own private ceiling. The trees collapsed, stitching themselves together to form voluminous blankets, no longer crying, no longer ablaze, but simply sad, and simply warm. The choking ground, the gashed mountain, rose, and leveled off — softening itself. The largest bed known to man.
And I was at the foot of it.
I was at the foot of the bed, rubbing your soft, perfect feet.
You asked why my heart was beating so fast.
I asked if you thought we were climbing down a mountain, together.
You pulled yourself around, and looked into the fire in my eyes, n said:
"The ground is far away."
So I kiss your sole, and hand you your silky shoe,
an' though I hold you so close, so soft, so high,
I'll always be losing you.
