I've given up mountain climbing.  Especially in my mind.  Forever, it seems. I've begun training for my next marathon run.  I'm already imagining the pain.  And my very last sprinting step across the finish line.

 Today I didn’t climb a mountain again.  Why?  Because it wasn’t there.  Had it been…if only…I tell myself.  And so this unclimbed mountain has become my metaphor of many ifs.  But so often have I not climbed this (perhaps somewhere existent but hidden?) mountain of late, so many ifs have I postulated in contrast to the monotony of not, that I’ve grown tired and fatigued of the effort altogether now.  More drained, in fact, than if I had run up the slope of the last real mountain nonstop. 

 So is it my imagination that fails to provide me with  a start?  Or is it the mountain that doesn’t imagine me—I am not a part of its visualized geography? And, hence, unworthy of the part.

 And if I were to feel the same about the lack of a lover by my side…if only…(as my sanity departs)