“the topography of happiness”
from “Xenomorphine, The Bonesetter’s Revenge, Book2”
I often wonder if Sisyphus stopped to enjoy the view from the top of the mountain. After an eternity of pushing the boulder uphill, he would make it to the top, a wiry and weary prisoner to someone else’s wrath, see the wicked landscape of Hades from the tallest heights, and be comforted by his sentence. I suspect that sometimes he tipped the boulder himself, sending it in an angry, violent descent back into the dark, vile depths below.
Lower than the damned dwellers, deeper than the cursed and fallen shadows, the collected plaque in the bottom of the ecosystem of life.
A base and hopeless beginning. There, where the mountain of guilt meets the canyon of woe, he finds the strength to climb again, even if he doesn’t want to. An endless ascent to a view of unfavorable oblivion.
He squares his shoulders in the hellish gloom, rights himself soundly beneath the well-rounded behemoth, and budges the boulder up, slowly, repetitiously, forcefully, until the dust has been completely kicked from its resting surfaces and momentum carries it
up, ever up, for eternity,
until the inevitable apex is reached, and descent is a necessary response
to happiness.