Guilty

I try to give what I’m carrying to the mountain. Take, take, take, take my feet beg, as they tread the path through the foothills where my pace is quick.

And then begins the climb. The slopes drag me backwards, and I pull and stretch my limbs until they burn with penance.

I try to give what I’m carrying to the mountain. I try to find a fresh start with every breath of sweet fresh air.

I implore the tiny wreaths around my feet to look like yellow mountain flowers, and the rounded, marble headstones to look like flint and mountain rock.

And when I reach the top of the mountain and lay my burden on the ground, I plead with the mountain to show me infinity, and to offer me an endless, rolling landscape of boundless possibility.

But instead the mountain shows me eternity, and the fragile, blue line between heaven and earth.

I can’t give my guilt to the mountain.

The slopes pushed me downward as I make my scrambling, slipping descent. As I reach the foothills where my pace grows slower, I take the guilt that’s still in my arms and place it across my shoulders. I can feel its weight settle quickly around me; heavier, now. Woven thick and strong with my pathetic attempts to avoid it, and as heavily stained as my heart and hands.

And it sinks like rock through my flesh, through my bones, until I am paralysed and powerless. No longer something I am carrying, but something I am. For I am guilty. I am guilt.