Mountain Affairs (Sestina) | MARISA E. TRETTEL

Mountain Affairs (Sestina)

MARISA E. TRETTEL | VERMONT Week six begins, a signal of the end soon you’ll pack up your car with disheveled desire leave the intoxication of the mountain air, but first, once more to the creek to swim where you can not see the other undiscovered bodies before you go back to your home in large cities, go get out, it has come to an end back to the street lights, the late night trains, the see no stars sky. Back to the place where you only desire to get through, survive the times, take care of that creak developing in your back, scale that mountain of paperwork building on your desk, the mountain of bills rising from your overstuffed mailbox, go dream only of the fervent flowing creek in those sparing moments before the end of your long, laborious day. Do not tell him of your desire to be elsewhere. Tell him, I am happy to be here, see? Show him. Pretend. Do it until he says I see. Do it until you can escape back to the mountain Maybe this time will be different? Yes, but your desire will bubble up inside you until you go Let it. There is no other way to make it to the end but to brew it and bring it back with you to the creek. In more tormented moments, you’ll listen for the creak of bed posts and floor boards, search for something you can not see I’m not happy anymore, he’ll say, I want this to end You’ll wonder, did it begin while you were away on the mountain? You’ll know the exact moment you must let him go when it’s time to pack away the decaying truths of your desire After all, what is desire but that which washes over you, like the creek? Once you accept that, then you can go for good. There is nothing else to see

here. You have lived a small time, the mountain looms large, and all things must end. But there is one need that will lingers: you want to see all in the darkness of the creek, the looming mountain above you before you go, hesitantly, once more, towards the end.