The words were never able to escape my throat
while I stared at you in awe at each restaurant
and let them be drowned out by the clinking of silverware
and the endless spewing of nervous verbiage.
But between the span of weeks that you spent away
convincing the government agents of your accuracy,
I drug broken chains attached at each of my wrists
that left a trail through the sands as I visited my goddess.
You never saw the anchor that they were attached to before you appeared
or how the whirlpool drug me under and left me gasping,
but your tenderness shattered what was left of the memory
and started to heal the splinters left by the shipwreck.
I believe she heard the metal links colliding with one another
and she was by my side before I could summon her,
but with one glance she knew something was amiss
she tilted her head and whispered “What is it child?”.

The words were barely able to escape my throat
as I gazed over her and sighed “I love her more than mountains”.
The waves tumbled and crashed with vigor
as the winds struggled to carry the heaviness of the utterance.
Her silence begged an explanation for what was heard
and so I began a faulty attempt to provide clarity,
each word passed through lips trembling with fear
and was drowned out by the storm so no others would hear.
"I have encountered majestic mountains many times
but there is no surface on any that has carried her warmth,
there are none that have made me desire so greatly
or any that have provided the happiness she causes effortlessly.
They have not moved me to rethink eternities
or caused me to reconsider my path in this world,
they lack the capacity to understand me as the ever-shifting waters do
and their beauties combined do not compare.".

A single knowing tear escaped her eye and collided with the waters
causing time to run as slowly as the moment before the first explosion
the same moment that birthed Father Time himself
and she took my hand and carried me on a journey to change my mind.
She brought me to each mountain on the body of Tella Mater
silently hoping that one of them would change my mind,
I cannot explain the beauty that they held, but still I shook my head
and she started to understand what was meant in those few words.
I do not know who she consorted with for permission to leave her stead
but we became astronauts and sailed through endless darkness,
until we crash landed on ground covered in red, powdered rust
and looked upwards at the most majestic mountain we had encountered.
There was a hope in her eyes as I stared at it with contemplation
but it dimmed and she sighed as I shook my head yet again,
I could feel the heaviness that was exhaled in that sigh
as if she held a secret that she could not yet share with me.

We escaped from that world and into another immediately
neither she nor I were aware of how we traveled there,
but we stood on solid nothingness at the intersection of oblivion and eternity
with a mountain before us whose peak could never be reached.
Without hesitation she fell to her knees and beckoned me to follow
she trembled as she searched for words to explain where we were,
but when I did not fall to my knees or disavow my statement
a wind fell off the mountain that spoke every language and none.
“What will soon pass you have caused yourself.
The mountains possess an endurance that your love will not.”.
Then we found ourselves at the same shoreline where we began
with the rattling of broken chains scraping across the sand.
In that moment I knew the words you spoke would come
though I was not aware that they would assault my ears so quickly,
perhaps I should hold my tongue now as I should have held it then,
but the universe already knows that I loved you more than mountains.