The Mountain Between Us

by Charles Martin

“Pain is weakness leaving your body.”

somewhere in miles gone by … somewhere between way back there and here … I gave you my heart

I wake up each day thinking I’ll wake up tomorrow, too. It’s not necessarily true.

In the trees, I’d lose all sense of perspective. Direction. Maybe life is like that.

I’ve spent my life running. One of the things I’ve learned is to look just a few feet ahead. Not more than four or five steps. It helps in long distance, because you’re already in a lot of pain, and breaking it into small, doable pieces is about all you can handle. Others will tell you to keep your eyes up, focus on the finish line, but I’ve never been able to do that. I can only focus on what’s in front of me. If I do that, the finish line will come to me.

I think when two people really love each other … I mean …” My voice cracked. “… Way down deep … like where their souls sleep and dreams happen, where pain can’t live ’cause there’s nothing for it to feed on … then a wedding is a bleeding together of those two souls. Like two rivers running together. All that water becoming the same water. Mine did that.

With the sun breaking the horizon, I clicked RECORD, took three steps, and threw the recorder as far as I could. It spun through the air and disappeared into the daylight and the foam of a receding wave and an outgoing tide.

Maybe piecing is continual. Maybe the glue takes time to dry. Maybe bones take time to mend. Maybe it’s okay that the mess I call me is in process. Maybe it’s a long, hard walk out of the crash site. Maybe the distance is different for each of us. Maybe love is bigger than my mess.