10 We're on the top of a bare mountain, overlooking an abyss. Far below, I see the river, thin as a needle, and the high-mountain pond. We laugh, satisfied to have finally reached the top; it seemed impossible. We relax, leaving our backpacks on the ground. The person I love, the one who encouraged me to do the hike, walks contentedly along the rock face, finds a place to sit at the edge of the precipice and contemplate the landscape, looks at me smiling, moves back a little perhaps so I can take a picture, bends down to sit me on the rock, and the rock is dampened as it slopes down to the abyss. It's instantaneous, it disappears, and only a word of surprise and devastation remains in the air, and consciousness ignites this word from the first syllable to the final neutral vowel: shit.

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