tonight the mountain joins us for dinner—an exhausting, insufferable, insurmountable dinner guest, always hungry, never full, knows more, is older on a different scale of time, expresses her boredom with my short life, and so openly.

for you and i, this encounter defines our lives and shapes our story.

though not for her.

she knows our kind, witnessed from what sad state we first emerged, sheltered us when the earth was mere middle-aged.

and now we climb upon her, like thankless grandchildren too far removed from where we came.

the mountain drawls on in her patrician vox: be grateful for the time you have, she bawls, though you rot and pass away too soon.

true gratitude, she insists, takes a millenia to embody. she puts down her dessert spoon and turns up to the stars.

there are those who believe me a squalling infant, who knew the earth when she was young and when i mere molten lava, spewing from her core.

i, too, crawled out from the center of the earth.

though i stand here now, it was not always so.

the mountain finishes her cake and asks for more.