36

It was strange to see your stone today. Weathered, oh so cold.
Knowing that you'll never mount the heights you once proposed.
Your cord was cut too early, you never had the chance,
to scale those cliffs and reach the stars we talked so much about.

The pitons glint from your ascent,
dead eyes that hold no line,
vague, metallic skeleton of life lived to the full.
The mountainside is colder now, much like your current plinth,
and day by day I sit and wonder,
where it was you went.
The thought of fire, bright as yours extinguished in a vault, 
locked away from open skies
to cold, unyielding dark...
It shakes my core, I rock to side, my keening cuts the air, till finally,
my breathe is spent, and as I'm lying there, I look again up to the night,
and see the million stars,
once they shined like diamonds, now, they are but scars, though even as I gasp and retch at where my thoughts alit, I realize now, I know, at last, where it was you went.

Adventure always calls to those whose flames eclipse the night, daring them to shake their fist
and soar to greater heights,
to truly live, and take the risk, that
they may not persist.
You're up there now, new friends in tow, Amelia grinning by your side, 
brighter now than us below,
never more to hide.