Breadcrumb #670

PATRICK MACKENDY

Sweat-soaked. Dress shirt, but a towel now.
These calloused hands. Nearly surge to higher level now.
A boy is young, but the day is too.
“Ughk,” he grunted.
*Silence*, the boulder was a mute.
A technicolor opal, metallic rinds; onyx enshrined.
Its nothing was his everything.
“How long have I been here?”
Its purpose was his pilgrimage
“How high can I go?”
“Out of my hands now.”
“I am the seed, the shepherd sows.”
He juts onward and upward, barely shaking the stone.
Again.
The boy won’t break on his own.
Again.
The boy will make it to the end..
Again!
The one who ascends, has claimed the ascent.
AGAIN!
Thunderstruck pebbles and dumbstruck awe, make strange bedfellows.
“No.”
The molded earth wakes, the rock quakes, the sound takes him by surprise.
The stone doesn’t quite bisect, as it crumbles from side to side.
He tumbles with the shifting ground. It’s tilt, no favors lent.
At the bottom again, past the smoke, where the fallen went.
But they caught him.
Hands of warmth, and arms of grace.
“Who are you?”
Eyes of joy. Tears on their face.
“I fell.”
Smiles that caress.
“I failed.”
“No,” said a Woman.
“You did your very best.”

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