With dirt-caked cheeks (on fire),
With ****** knuckles (both dry and flowing),
With a sweat-boiled brow,
With Christmas morning anticipation,
You will your tired, desiring eyes
Above the jagged, pinnacle stone.

You pinch your eyelids.
Breathe.
And open them
To be cast upon the vista
You have toiled towards for all those sleepless years.
Only,
It is not.

It is nothing.

Blackness, emptiness, silence.
Devoid.
The void.

And it just knocks the living hell out of you.
Your breath leaves you
(hand in hand with your sense of comfort).
Your stomach turns to starving snakes.

Avert your eyes!
But the image remains the same;
North, South, East, West.
The darkness has lain down upon the entirety of the compass.

So you turn round,
Look back for the familiar mountain path,
But it is gone.
Where there was once struggle and life,
There is now only empty atmosphere.
So you turn inwards,
Close your eyes,
And see only
The endless absence of light.