Mountain

On the day I set out on the climb, grief saddled in my back like a bag of marbles, my breath like clouds hanging on the low peaks of a mountain, on the day I set out leaving nothing behind, nothing on the bed, no version of myself, just my voice through the night, the voice I use to ward off nightmares. (My voice is a still life in itself, a shroud green and ultramarine deep blue, a bowl of apples and tangerines on a table.) On the day I set out, the mountain is high in front of me, the unreliable god of mist and fog. I have no voice to say how high my fingers must lift as if on a lover's upper lip, to take in the breath of how high my mountain is—white teeth behind a snow cap, numberless springs, cold like the enzymes in spit— a version of me is still asleep: the moving of a limb in sleep. Everything becomes lucid.