Tag: dailyprompt-2148

Those who climb trees with such dexterity as to know how the vertical itself is a kind of knowing. The up-and-down world of clamping fingers and knowing what manner of pressure to apply to manage to hold. I want access to that but I come up against some limit in who I am. A sportsperson would hum in mine ears to try harder. Try to be better is a motto I’ll go with, thanks to a certain poet, but it doesn’t work with sports so much as an ethics for life. Wait. I had this leg on the walls of the world and all it really took was your sweet voice telling me there was a hold. A purple one, a yellow one. Just go for it. A spokesperson would yell in mine ears on behalf of surfaces: it’s going to be alright. I saw videos on the internet of climbers surpassing that moment of freeze to do something amazing like haul their bodies sideways, jump horizontally across the limit, and the thaw on their faces as they landed splat triumphant on the mat. One time another man landed on top of me, I let out a little squeal. It was deliriously exciting. I still have the scar. A rock song. All of the holds became rocks in themselves. You had to find a way to speak to them. If I do this with my fingers, if I really push, if my core could hold out longer for hovering. Suddenly it wasn’t about getting to any top or topping the wall or making that tap of completion. I wanted to find good places to literally hang out, my body a sort of hesitant dying leaf, relishing this thanatos in departing the life-giving branch. My nerve damage screamed in the rigid day. In the cafe with too-hot soup my sap bleeding out meant everything. I have envy for the strength of limbs in those who have earned it, their elastic ecstasies. In my dreams I hung upside down from trees, the frames of swings, the scaffolds of my dilapidated neighbourhood. My hovering grew powerful with longing for motion and soon I would strike a leg up, feel lusty for the whiteout snow beyond summit. Currently, the hardest climb in the world is called ‘Silence’. As I write this, condensation drips from the inside of my window panes, waters the baby aloes, drips like a cat lapping water. I watch a perfect lunar kitten suckle your fingers. The first nourishment. We can’t insulate the thought of my life. I put up my right hand higher than god and clutch.