I was crying, he was yelling.

That’s how I remember it.

I was crying and I was yelling.

That’s how he remembers it.

In green wellies, yelling in the rain.

The echoes in my womb

a painful reminder that

it was now a tomb.

Or was it sunny?

We might have been in sandals.

On a granite mountain pass?

Grass browned by a summer of drought.

A summer of certainty

swallowed by doubt.

I needed to beat this lump of rock.

He was in shock at the steepness of our route.

It was breathlessly high and breathlessly hot.

I might have said something spiteful,

recycling from the night before.

He flung it back.

His counter attack took us up to the summit.

Sweating and fretting past steadier climbers,

sending scree rolling as fast as expletives.

The landscape shimmied and shined and panted,

It’s untainted beauty still scant compensation

for the sensation of loss now escaping

as cruel words, and absurd demands

that could never be met.

Red with regret, we reached the top.

We sat on rocks and gulped the air.

Too sore, too awed for further fight

against the might of such a day,

we slumped into a strange embrace,

more relief than first love’s grace.

His face said, please,

please can we love again.

Two heartbreaks will not make a right.

Two June blue eyes held me tight.

It was a long way down.