Overlook

There is nothing nice about death, nothing pretty or beautiful. There is no peace, just stillness. Stillness is loneliness. Stillness is loneliness.

Hills, mountains. They were small mountains.  Small mountains with paved roads leading halfway to the peak, small mountains with a footpath of dirt and pebble leading through forest.  Here the trees keep their green leaves year round to shade the mountain, and my shady blonde hair was caught in the corner of my mouth, tangled across my face, hooked around my nose. That mountain-climbing wind knows how to share its affections, welcomed or not.

Up here I am near them all. Up here I can think around them, not have to call them by name.

I think about director Tony Scott stepping of a bridge in LA two days ago. I think of Speedy Peterson’s unidentifiable face, frozen with frown, still missing his sister even in death.  In bending for a handful of pebbles, I lose my balance but recover just enough to throw them too hard over the edge of the mountain ledge, my fingertips stained with chalky brown dirt. Up here I can think of everyone else’s deaths. I can pluck the blooms from the trees, I can spit groans and screams and hear the sister mountain’s response.

There is nothing passive in me now. There is nothing passive in this voice. I know what that earthless breeze feels like.

These men have names.