The mountain wasn’t called
Break Neck Ridge for nothing,
But I assumed as a warning
of what could possibly happen
if you let yourself become
distracted. ‘You’re not being
very talkative,’ my girlfriend said.
‘I’m concentrating,’ I said. ‘I’m
trying not to break my neck.’
‘You hollered when we climbed
Hollering Mountain,’ she said.
‘When are you going to learn
that names of mountains are
not suggestions on how to act?’ ‘I
almost broke my neck on a rock
about a mile back,’ I said.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about it?’
she said. ‘Because you were
ahead of me.,’ I said. ‘But we go
past that rock on the way back,’ she said.
‘I thought we were on a loop,’
I said. ‘There are no loops,’ she said.
‘Only unfinished circles.’ ‘What about all the ascending
we did to get to this point,’ I said. ‘I’m talking
about our relationship, not this mountain,’
she said. ‘The first time we kissed,’ I said,
‘didn’t you tell me it felt like you were ascending?’
‘I did,’ she said. ‘But it must have been
an optical illusion, because since we’ve
gone out the quality of my life has
dramatically plunged.’ ‘We did things,’
I said. ‘For example, we hiked up
this mountain.’ ‘We argued as much
as we hiked,’ she said. ‘I don’t
remember anything about the hike,
except that it proved we were incompatible.’
‘It wasn’t our natural setting,’ I said.
‘You can’t blame our incompatibility
on the mountain,’ she said. ‘What can we blame
it on?’ I said. ‘That you were so concerned
about breaking your neck,’ she said, ‘that
you caused us to break up. ’That isn’t
true,’ I said. ‘Go tell it to the mountain,’
she said. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

—Hal Sirowitz; Philadelphia, PA