#yeah write

Sisphye

Today is the first day, and today he approaches the rock for the first time, with hand still soft from years of royalty. His last trick has not panned out, but he still looks for an escape on his first trip up the hill. It takes him a whole day, or nearabouts as he can tell, to get up the hill and for the rock to begin its first decent. He stares in disbelief as it falls, still not understanding what he had been cursed to.

Today is the 30th day, if his tally on the side of a tree at the base of the hill is anything to go by. It is hard to tell without a day cycle, or other worldly constructs, but those who watch over him occasionally change, so they are as close to a day marker as he may reach. He spits at eat one as they arrive, offended by the slight of being lower than them. His rage burns in his eyes, would melt the rock in front of him with its force, if only he were granted such powers on his descent. At the summit, as the rock rolls from him again, he screams, the anger so great that it must escape.

Today is the 900th day. It has been 2 years and 170 days. He does not know that. He does know morning though, as the time where he strikes a deal with his guard. 

“If I reach the summit twice today, you must loosen my chains”.

And for a while, it works. His chains have grown looser for the past year, so near unattached that today he will give one great pull, and they will snap away from his wrists. Sadly for him, the guards have a boss who is not so easily tricked. He is rebound, just as sure as the first time, with new guards who are commanded to not make deals. One does not make deals with cursed men.

Today is the 27,000th day. It has been 73 years, yet he has not changed. His skin is still as soft as the day he died, his joints just as pained. Every single trip hurts just as much as the previous, as will every future trip for the rest of eternity. The guards have changed, as spirits have paid their debts, but the new ones follow the same rules as those before. For the 100th day in a row, he weeps as he descends from the mountain top, the rock resting below him after its much shorter trip. He weeps for the life he lost. He weeps for his own twisted fate. He weeps for the cold feeling in his bones, the feeling that wraps him in its embrace at the bottom of every trip, leaving in its wake no emotion, and no rest.

Today is the 810,010th day. It has been over 2 millennia since he began his first trip, and he has learned some tricks. He knows that pushing with his back to the rock provides different pain than pushing with his arms. He can see all of the rivers from the top, his favorite glowing with the fires burning on its surface. He knows that the guards have food that can be won, food that doesn’t turn to ash when it touches his mouth, and wine that doesn’t disappear as it passes his lips. He knows that his work begins again when he reaches the bottom of the hill, but there is no reason to take his time. He has seen all the sights before, no matter how pretty they are. 

Today when he gets to the top of the hill, he takes the last step needed to reach the summit. The Underworld is vast, and from such a height, the different sections fit together in a beautiful tapestry of lives just as insignificant as his own. A small smile rests on his worn face, the same smile he has had for the past century. He smiles, because he knows himself, and he knows his life, and knows his fate.

“Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.” - Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 1942

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I remember

when you said,

"There are stars in your eyes-

You belong in heaven"

when you meant,

you’re too far

too hot blue

or red cold.

I remember

when you said,

"Geography can be

crushing"

when you meant,

space travel takes

too much time.

I remember.

"You are a sunset

to me".

And that means

I’m not an art critic,

but the colors reach

too wide-

signifies the end

of something.

A day.

Remember,

"our day will come"?

"Teleportation".

It’s ridiculous and

we say it is

endless, effortless,

and it is

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From the pay phone attached to the coral stucco wall of the La Jolla Resort, I could see the Chinese lanterns lit over the shuffleboard court, a couple sitting in lawn chairs holding hands and looking out on to the Florida Bay, a rented fishing boat with a Bimini top rocking, the sound of its sweet tapping carrying across the yard of sand and palm trees, softened by the bougainvillea draped at…