The Rain Ends At Dusk

Thunder walks away on carpet slippers, wet leaves cockle and whisper. A backwash of sound lingers, a rustling of mulch as if a mouse were nibbling a bible. "I want to search for the perfect mountain," you say, lying beside me in the dark. You don't mean a real mountain. I don't know what you mean. The rain ends at dusk, but the sodden sky keeps falling, it splashes where your body, is deep and deafened. This thing I am doing with myself; I have seen horses do - nostrils full of shock and rage, a question funneled through foaming arteries. That night I dream of hammers on pitons, the clicking of carabiner; your hands grasping my features struggling to climb above me.