Beautiful Views From the Top

I wake up in the morning and teeter to the bathroom where I look in the mirror and sigh before swallowing my stone. I will feel it’s gentle weight travel down my esophagus to settle in my stomach, where it will plant its anchor to keep me down here with everybody else. At the beginning, it gave me belly aches and nose bleeds. Now it just feels normal. Now everything feels normal.

My phone chimes. It’s mom. “Just checking in sweetheart.” I don’t say anything. “I know today is a hard day.” I lock eyes with the reflection in the mirror. "It’s okay if you don’t want to talk, honey. Take it easy, okay? I’m here if you need me. We all are.”

I imagine my feelings are up on the mountain top where I saw them last. They stay high up there; even through the winter months, even with the coyotes and grizzlies, even with the dead trees falling left and right. I imagine my anger starting the fire, so my laughter can warm its fingers. Before they retire for the night, I picture my tears extinguishing the flames. I cannot manage to hike up to the campsite where my feelings reside, due to the weight of the 1,078 stones I’ve ingested.

The reflection in the mirror depicts a well rested individual with clear skin and dull eyes. The reflection practices a smile. Holds it for a second, lips arched, white teeth exposed, then drops it rapidly. The reflection picks up the stone with its pointer and thumb. The reflection looks at the stone for a second. The reflection pops it between its lips and caresses it with its mouth, arching the center of its tongue down to form a little bowl for the stone to rest in for a moment before starting its journey down. When the stone begins to dissolve and a bitter taste erodes from it, the reflection gulps the stone down. The reflection looks in the mirror and sighs.

I began my stone regiment so I could go to work and come home like everybody else. I was floating and I needed to be weighed down. The stones were all too easy to acquire. I downloaded an app and filled out a questionnaire, and before I knew it I received a message telling me that the stones were on their way to my doorstep. The very next day, there they were, sitting on the porch in their little bottle.

At first I was skeptical. The stones sat patiently on the bathroom vanity in their nice container. I stared at them nightly for five nights. All night, in fact - I didn’t go to sleep that week. I didn’t go to work either. I just kept staring at the stones. They stared right back. On the sixth night my eyes burned and the stones were still scattered in the confines of the cylinder. I opened the bottle and swallowed my first one. Then I went to bed.

It took a while to start feeling their weight. On the day of my first stone, I felt one stone heavier. I could walk to work without meandering too far. I didn’t end up on the mountain top, but instead at my desk with my framed photos. I looked at one particular framed photo, the one with Barney and I as children on a swing set. I was up high at my peak with my legs flailing, a gigantic smile across my face. He was falling back down, laughing as he became momentarily weightless from the steep acceleration down. I felt a pull in my stomach. I thought it was reminding me of the feeling of falling after reaching the peak of a swing. I thought it might lead to another week in bed, another doctor’s note for my boss. But after a few moments I recognized the sensation was the gentle gravity of the single stone in my belly. I opened my spreadsheet and started entering numbers.

On the sixteenth day of the stones, I passed a woman busking in the small park around the corner from the office. I stoped and listened, because she had a beautiful voice. It melted and flowed around me like the beautiful streams along the hike up the mountain that Barney and I used to climb on hot summer days. The sun was shining in a perfect trapezoid on an iron bench and I sat. The singer’s melody was the chirping of birds and the buzzing of mosquitos. Its tone was the splinters of kindling and the musk of moss. I wanted to listen to the singer all day. But by her third song, the stones clinked together inside me, and pulled me onwards.

Now I have so many stones inside of me that rattle and clink and hold me down. I don’t wander off any more. I go to work and come home. I don’t think about Barney, I don’t listen to music, and I don’t sit in sunny trapezoids.

I buckle up. It’s Saturday. I swallowed my 1,079th stone today. I do not have to go to work and come home today, so I suppose today is a good day for a drive. We’re on the main route before I ask mom, “Where are we going?”

Mom keeps her eyes on the road. The car is quiet and the air is tight like a vacuum cleaner. She speaks softly. “I thought we could hike the mountain together today.”

The stones are working their hardest. I can feel them hunkering, and my body grows weak from their efforts.

Mom turns to me for a moment, before turning her head back to face front. She whispers, “We can’t just pretend like it didn’t happen.”

Through the silence cuts the sound of two stones scraping against each other. The sound that escapes me is a sort of scratching and then a screech. Mom’s hand falls to my shoulder and squeezes.

I am more stone than self at this point. We stand at the base of the mountain and I want to go up, I really do, but the stones are just too heavy inside me. They are so heavy inside me that I keel over and fall onto the grass. I roll over so my face is planted in the dirt and the stones slosh to the edge of my abdomen. Mom sits beside me.

“I’m really starting to worry about you,” she says. “It’s been nearly three years.”

I breath in the smell of dirt. The stones travel up my windpipe.

“I haven’t even heard you say his name since the funeral.”

The stones are in my throat now. I know my feelings are waiting for me at the peak of this very mountain. My grief and despair are up there. But so are my joy and gratitude. I push myself up to a hunched seat.

The stones release from my throat and a loud wail erupts out of me. I miss the streams and the moss and the bugs and the memories. Most of all, I miss the beautiful views from the top.