Rock

If you can get to the top without
all of the breathing stopping,
and maybe one day you will be able to stop things like
gasping
for breath every time someone is separated from you.

If you can let the flesh of your knee sting when the rock cuts it as you wedge yourself into smaller and smaller places, and hope that whatever stones are above you don't come falling on your head
or on your arm
or on your pride.

There is always a way up, and you clamor up the fingertips attached to your fingers,
willing them to keep you stable and somehow hold all of the weight of a body.

And don't look down, because it is far,
and sometimes it is better to not know how far you will fall.

Sometimes it is better, to pretend that the distance is not capable of imposing splinters and cracks in the bones that will travel through like a bolt of lightening

across your body and through it.

The impact of your body on itself, the weight of it crushing you and you realizing that you have been turned against by it, as it impales itself on a log at the bottom of the pit.

Maybe sometimes we only look up and then
we cannot see the brush and pebbles,
the way there is nothing but emptiness to catch whatever fall you allow yourself.

(based upon the distance).