Every week, she does
this.
She stands at the
bottom of a tall, bleak mountain.
Wind blows, rips iron
clear off her armor, showing her jeans.
She still has the
scars from where the wolves bit her.
She calls them mosquitoes, but she ain’t much bigger than they.
Pulls a hook from her
pocket.
Where the ladder
doesn’t reach, she carves her own way
Clear into the rock
She makes drawings
where she goes
Happy cats, mostly,
And her dreams
and things she sees
every day that you call dreams.
If wind whaps her
face
She shrugs it off.
If a bird pecks at her back
She sheds just one long
teardrop, which freezes into a bludgeon
And she fights.
If her hands freeze,
She may sprout wings
if it suits her.
At the summit,
someone greets her.
“We thought for sure
you’d stay home,” they say.
She melds thin air into a beer bottle
bites off the cap
and takes a long sip. Then she smirks.
“What, and miss the
sunrise?”
